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INAUGURATION 


OF 


GEORGE  TYBOUT  PURVES,  D.D., 


PROFESSOR 


NEW  TESTAMENT  LITERATURE  AND  EXEGESIS. 


NEW  YORK: 

ANSON   D.    F.   RANDOLPH 
&  COMPANY, 

(incorporated) 

182   FIFTH   AVENUE. 

1892. 


PRFSS  OP 

EDWARD  O.  JENKINS'  SON, 

NEW  YORK. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 


The  Rev.  George  T.  Purves,  D.D.,  was  inaugurated  Pro- 
fessor of  New  Testament  Literature  and  Exegesis  in  Princeton 
Theological  Seminary,  on  Friday,  September  i6,  1892,  at  11 
o'clock,  in  the  First  Presbyterian  Church  of  Princeton.  The 
order  of  exercises  on  this  occasion  was  as  follows : 

Hymn. 

Prayer,  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  William  Irvin,  one  of  the  Corresponding- 
Secretaries  of  the  Board  of  Home  Missions. 

Administration  of  the  Pledge  to  the  New  Professor,  by  the 
Rev.  Dr.  A.  Gosman,  President  of  the  Board  of  Directors. 

The  Charge,  by  the  Rev.  George  D.  Baker,  D.D.,  Pastor  of  the 
First  Presbyterian  Church,  Philadelphia. 

The  Inaugural  Address,  by  Professor  Purves. 
Benediction, 


The  Charge  and  Inaugural  Address  are  here  published  by  order  of 
the  Board  of  Directors. 


THE   CHARGE. 


THE  REV.  GEORGE  D.  BAKER,  D.D. 


CHARGE. 


My  Dear  Brother  : 

By  appointment  of  my  fellow-Directors  it  is  made  my  duty 
and  privilege  to  welcome  you  on  their  behalf  to  the  Chair  of 
New  Testament  Literature  and  Exegesis  in  Princeton  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  and  to  charge  you  to  faithfulness  in  the  per- 
formance of  the  duties  connected  with  it.  We  are  not  unmind- 
ful of  what  you  have  relinquished  in  order  to  accept  our  call. 
We  know  well  the  joy  and  success  you  have  had  in  the  pastor- 
ate, and  appreciate  fully  the  wrench  upon  your  heart  in  sur- 
rendering it.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  would  not  have  you 
unmindful  of  what  has  been  given  you  of  God  in  exchange. 
What  a  choice  and  fertile  field  have  you  here !  What  a  soil 
into  which  to  cast  the  immortal  seed  of  divine  truth !  What 
potential,  deep-reaching,  wide-spreading  influence  you  must 
inevitably  exert,  as  young  men  go  forth  everywhere  preaching 
the  Word  with  the  impress  of  your  life  and  teaching  stamped 
upon  them  !  Verily,  you  have  been  called  higher,  even  to  the 
position  which,  at  least  in  my  judgment,  is  the  most  responsi- 
ble in  the  Christian  Church.  To  be  the  teacher  of  teachers, 
the  preacher  to  preachers,  is  henceforth  your  vocation,  your 
honor,  your  tremendous  responsibility.  Moreover,  anent  the 
persistency  with  which  we  have  pursued  you  until  we  have 
captured  you,  we  justify  ourselves  on  the  indisputable  ground 
that  in  these  days  of  sharp  battle,  when  the  very  citadel  of  our 
faith  is  being  boldly  assailed  from  unusual  quarters,  Princeton 
has  a  right  to  her  sons — a  right  to  call  them,  from  any  post  in 
the  wide  field,  for  defence  and  for  service.     You  are  largely 


8  Charge. 


^> 


your  Alma  Mater's  debtor.  Therefore  you  ought  to  be,  and  you 
doubtless  are,  ready,  in  as  much  as  in  you  lies,  to  preach  the 
Gospel  at  Princeton  also. 

In  passing,  you  will  permit  me  to  remind  you  of  the  men 
(the  word  should  be  written  large)  whom  you  succeed — 
noblesse  oblige.  As  you  read  their  names  and  review  their 
work,  you  may  well  be  righteously  proud.  The  consciousness 
that  you  sit  in  the  chair  in  which  they  sat,  cannot  fail  to  inspire 
you  to  do  your  very  best.     It  will  put  you  on  your  mettle. 

Moreover,  I  congratulate  you  on  the  department  of  study 
and  instruction  which  fall  to  your  lot  in  the  chair  into  which 
you  are  to-day  inducted.  I  am  not  surprised  that  you 
"  coveted  "  it  and  chose  it  rather  than  another.  "-All  Scripture 
is  given  by  inspiration  of  God,"  and  woe  to  him  who  sets  lit- 
tle store  by  any  portion  of  it ;  but  the  Scripture  that  proceeded 
directly  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  Incarnate  Word  and  of  those 
who  "  companied  with  Him  "  and  heard  with  their  own  ears 
the  wonderful  Voice,  must  ever  seem  the  choicest  and  the 
dearest,  the  most  potent  and  constraining  and  decisive  of  all — 
the  very  heart  of  the  great  revelation.  It  is  into  this  holy 
heart  that  it  is  given  you  of  God  reverently  to  lead  the 
young  men  who  willingly  surrender  themselves  to  your  guid- 
ance. Verily  you  need  to  go  with  unsandalled  feet  and  with 
prayerful  lips.  It  is  told  of  General  Gordon,  that  during  his 
journey  in  the  Soudan  country,  each  morning  for  half  an  hour 
there  lay  outside  his  tent  a  white  handkerchief.  The  whole 
camp  knew  what  it  meant,  and  treated  the  signal  with  the 
highest  respect.  No  foot  crossed  the  threshold  while  the  little 
guard  kept  watch.  The  most  pressing  message  waited  for 
delivery  until  that  simple  signal  was  withdrawn.  God  and 
Gordon  were  in  communion.  You  understand  me  ?  Let  the 
^^sigJial"  lie  without  your  class-room  door !  Let  it  be  under- 
stood that  you  are  there  not  to  dissect  the  Gospel  and  the 
Epistle  as  though  they  were  dead  bodies,  but  to  press  your 
way  into  closest  contact  and  fullest  communion  with  the  Liv- 
ing Word  !  The  cry  is  in  the  air,  "  back  to  Christ."  Aye, 
aye,  we  take  it  up  and  we  sound  it  long  and  loud — "  back  to 


Charge.  9 

Christ."  Perhaps  the  cry,  as  it  issues  from  our  lips,  is  not  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  that  of  the  originators  of  it — perhaps  our 
"animus"  in  it  is  somewhat  different  from  theirs — but  still 
we  join  in  it,  and  we  make  the  welkin  ring  with  it.  "  Back  to 
Christ  ";  and  let  us  make  Him  the  final  judge  and  interpreter 
— let  us  abide  by  His  dicta  honestly,  fairly,  unflinchingly,  and 
"  take  His  word  for  it,"  when  He  tells  us  that  Moses  wrote  of 
Him,  and  that  Jonah  was  three  days  in  the  whale's  belly. 
"  Back  to  Christ" — to  Him  who  was  and  is  "the  Truth/'  and 
whose  testimony  must  therefore  be  unerring  testimony  for  all 
ages,  even  to  the  end  of  the  world ;  testimony  not  limited  by 
his  own  ignorance,  and  not  accommodated  to  the  ignorance  of 
the  times  and  of  the  people  in  which  and  among  whom  He 
lived.  "  Back  to  Christ  " — the  Church's  one  great  Teacher,  the 
world's  one  infallible  Scholar ;  who  stooped  indeed,  oh !  how 
low,  in  taking  upon  Himself  our  nature,  but  never  stooped 
so  low  as  to  misrepresent,  or  misinterpret,  or  mislead  in  order 
to  accommodate  Himself  to  human  infirmity  or  to  human 
ignorance. 

Unless  I  misjudge  you  altogether  you  need  no  charge  from  me 
to  be  fearless  of  everyone  in  your  searching  of  the  Scriptures, 
except  only  of  the  God  of  the  Scriptures.  As  one  has  truly 
said,  "  Fear  is  a  thing  which  a  scholar,  by  his  very  function, 
puts  behind  him."  You  will  not  be  bound  by  the  "  traditions 
of  the  fathers,"  but  neither  will  you  ignore  and  despise  them 
because,  forsooth,  there  pertains  to  them  what  is  accounted  in 
some  quarters  a  probable  disqualification  of  their  veracity,  viz.: 
age.  "  Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness  against  thy  neigh- 
bor" may  properly  be  sounded  in  the  ears  of  those  who  allege 
that  this  Seminary  is  timorous  in  its  handling  of  the  Word  of 
God,  because  it  does  not  welcome  and  encourage  the  hasty 
iconoclasm  of  the  day.  "  Prove  all  things,  hold  fast  that  which 
is  good."  You  will  not  be  unmindful  or  disregardful  of  the 
ancient  inscription:  "Be  bold";  and  again,  "  Be  bold  ";  but 
again,  and  finally,  "  Be  not  too  bold."  Boldness  and  rashness 
are  not  interchangeable  words.  It  is,  it  ever  has  been,  the 
glory  of  this  Seminary  to  be  bold  :  it  is  not,  it  never  has  been, 


lo  Charge. 

God  grant  it  never  may  be,  its  dishonor  to  be  rash.  There  is 
a  tendency  in  the  scholarship  of  the  day  to  "  think  more 
highly  of  itself  than  it  ought  to  think,"  and  consequently  to 
rush,  in  over-confidence  of  itself,  to  much  too  crude  conclu- 
sions. What  old  Isaac  said  to  the  boy  who  was  imposing 
upon  him,  "  How  is  it  that  thou  hast  found  it  so  quickly,  my 
son  ?  "  may  well  be  asked  of  certain  "  re-makers  "  of  the  Bible 
in  our  time,  who  are  impatient  because  the  Church  respectfully 
declines  to  accept  mere  theories  for  facts,  mere  guesses  for 
ascertained  certainties.  Human  life  is  too  brief,  too  brief 
and  too  solemn,  to  be  consumed  in  learning  to-day  that  which 
is  to  be  unlearned  to-morrow.  When  a  prophet  comes  with  a 
message  from  God,  it  must  be  received  and  it  must  be  believed, 
no  matter  how  it  upsets  even  cherished  convictions  ;  but  when 
a  prophet  (self-styled)  comes  with  only  his  own  unproved 
opinions  and  conjectures,  it  is  wise,  it  is  right,  nay,  it  is 
bounden,  sacred  duty  to  shut  the  door  against  him  as  "  a  dis- 
turber of  the  peace." 

Again  we  say,  let  these  Scriptures  be  searched,  sifted,  cast 
into  the  furnace  of  criticism  seven  times  heated,  and  we  must, 
and  we  will,  abide  the  result ;  only  let  not  mere  "  possibilities  " 
or  even  "  probabilities  "  be  reckoned  beforehand  as  the  result ; 
and  above  all,  let  not  the  conservatism  whose  motto  is  festina 
lente,  which  insists  upon  ascertaining  whether  the  bridge  will 
hold  before  it  enters  upon  the  crossing  of  it,  be  denominated 
either  bigotry  or  cowardice  or  inferior  scholarship.  You 
come  to  your  work  at  a  time  when  there  is  an  increasing  and 
a  much-to-be-rebuked  disposition  in  criticism  and  in  morals  to 
"  teach  for  commandments  the  doctrines  of  men  ";  to  lay  upon 
the  human  conscience  and  the  human  understanding  burdens 
which  the  Word  of  God  has  not  laid  ;  and  to  demand  the  accept- 
ance of  new-fangled  theories  with  reference  to  the  structure 
and  the  contents  of  the  Bible  on  the  ground  of  the  consummate 
and  infallible  scholarship  to  which  we  have  attained.  It  is  the 
old,  old  story  of  bringing  these  Scriptures  to  the  touchstone 
of  human  reason,  instead  of  the  human  reason  to  the  touch- 
stone of  these  Scriptures.     It  is  to  be  withstood  with  the  vigor 


'Char  ore.  ii 


i3 


with  which  Paul  withstood  Barnabas.  The  absolute  supremacy 
and  inerrant  infallibility  of  this  Book  of  God  as  it  came  from 
Him,  these  are  to  be  maintained  ;  or  we  shall  have  embarked 
upon  a  sad  and  stormy  and  fatal  sea.  Well  may  we  call  to 
mind  the  prayer  which  Seneca  puts  into  the  mouth  of  his 
pilot :  "■  O  Neptune,  you  may  sink  me,  or  you  may  save  me  ; 
but  whether  you  sink  me  or  whether  you  save  me,  I  will  keep 
my  riidder  true."  Well  also  may  we  say  of  this  Book,  as  the 
warlike  king  of  his  crown :  ''God  gave  it  to  me,  and  the  whole 
world  shall  not  take  it  away." 

But  I  do  not  forget  that  you  are  to  follow  me  with  your 
inaugural  address.  It  is  because  I  have  not  forgotten  it  that 
I  have  abstained  from  any  careful  or  minute  description  of  the 
work  given  into  your  charge — of  its  character  and  its  scope. 
This,  doubtless,  you  will  yourself  outline,  and  it  would  be 
unfair  in  me  to  trespass  upon  the  time  which  is  legitimately 
yours.  But  this  in  conclusion :  "  All  Scripture  is  given  by 
inspiration  of  God,  and  is  profitable  for  doctrine,  for 
reproof,  for  correction,  for  instruction  in  righteousness: 
that  the  man  of  God  may  be  perfect,  thoroughly  furnished 
unto  all  good  works."  This  last,  my  brother:  "that  the 
man  of  God  may  be  perfect,  thoroughly  furnished  unto  all 
good  works."  The  end  of  all  your  teaching  of  the  New 
Testament  is  to  make  "men  of  God,"  perfect  men  of  God, 
thoroughly  furnished  unto  all  good  works,  but  especially  unto 
that  one  work  to  which  "  the  Holy  Ghost  has  separated 
them."  "  A  learned  man,"  it  has  been  said,  "  is  a  torch."  So 
he  ought  to  be,  but  such  is  he  always  ?  Make  the  young  men 
who  sit  at  your  feet  "  learned  in  the  Scriptures";  cultivate  and 
insist  upon  the  exegetical  spirit  in  them,  which  shall  impel 
them  to  closest,  most  painstaking,  most  persistent  and  perse- 
vering investigation  and  comparison  of  the  holy  Gospels  and 
Epistles :  but  din  it  at  them  and  din  it  into  them,  that  they 
study  and  dig  and  search  solely  for  a  purpose,  viz. :  that  they 
may  be  (i)  fuller,  better  men;  and  (2),  that  they  may  "hold 
forth  the  word  of  life  "  to  others.  With  the  cry,  "  less  learn- 
ing and  more  practicality  in  the  pulpit,"  we  have  no  sympathy 


1 2  Charge. 

whatever.  God  mercifully  retard,  nay,  prevent  the  day  when 
reduced  scholarship,  abridged  literary  and  classical  and  theo- 
logical attainment  than  our  Book  now  demands  shall  be 
required  for  licensure  to  preach.  We  have  no  sympathy  with 
the  "short  cut  into  the  ministry"  tendency.  The  students 
here  are  to  be  revealers  of  things  to  others — they  must  first 
learn  the  things  themselves.  But  still  he  must  be  of  slow 
understanding  who  does  not  discern  the  sharp,  the  imperative 
demand  in  these  days  for  preaching  straight  into  the  lives 
which  men  are  living,  setting  forth  doctrine  not  as  an  end  in  it- 
self, but  as  an  incentive  and  a  spur  to  pure,  honest,  and  Christ- 
like being.  The  demand  is  a  large  one — to  preach  doctrine 
into  human  life,  and  so  save  it.  But  it  must  be,  it  can  be,  it 
is  being  met.  That  you  will  teach  the  young  men  (God  grant 
that  the  number  may  run  well  up  into  the  thousands)  who 
come  under  your  instruction,  so  to  handle  Gospel  and  Epistle 
that  they  may  be  "  thoroughly  furnished  unto  all  good  works," 
and  so  be  "  able  ministers  of  the  New  Testament,"  shall  be  our 
constant  prayer  for  you,  as  it  is  our  confident  expectation. 

Many  eloquent,  beautiful,  and  true  tributes  have  been  paid  by 
appreciative  minds  and  loving  hearts  to  Caspar  Wistar  Hodge 
of  blessed  memory ;  but  the  briefest  of  them  all  was  the  best. 
It  was  that  which  was  written  in  flowers  and  laid  gratefully 
and  reverently  upon  his  new-made  grave:  "  He  opened  unto 
us  the  Scriptures."  Aye,  he  did  open  them  so  that  the  Christ, 
the  living  Christ  in  them,  stood  revealed.  This,  my  brother, 
you  also  are  to  do — this  you  will  do — "  open  the  Scriptures  " 
so  that  the  young  men  committed  to  your  charge  will  see  the 
Christ  who  is  in  them,  their  Alpha  and  their  Omega ;  and  see- 
ing Him,  will  say  as  Saul  of  Tarsus  did  after  the  same  sight, 
"Whose  I  am  and  Whom  I  serve." 

God  be  with  you  as  you  take  your  honored  place  with  your 
honored  colleagues  in  this  honored  Seminary  of  the  Church. 


ST.  PAUL  AND  INSPIRATION. 

INAUGURAL    ADDRESS 


BY 


GEORGE  T.  PURVES,  D.D. 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS. 


Gentlemen  of  the  Board  of  Directors: 

In  accepting  the  chair  to  which  you  have  elected  me 
in  this  Seminary,  I  have  been  made  specially  sensible 
of  the  greatness  of  the  task  which  I  have  undertaken, 
by  reason  of  several  considerations. 

(i).  In  the  first  place,  it  requires  no  little  boldness 
to  attempt  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  the  three  dis- 
tinguished expositors  of  Scripture  who  have  heretofore 
graced  this  department  by  their  learning  and  exegetical 
skill.  Dr.  Charles  Hodge  laid  in  the  chair  of  Biblical 
Literature,  which  he  first  occupied,  the  foundations  for 
his  later  work  as  a  teacher  of  Scriptural  Theology,  as 
his  Commentaries  on  Romans,  Corinthians,  and  Ephe- 
sians  abundantly  show.  Dr.  J.  Addison  Alexander 
acquired  during  his  too  brief  term  of  office  a  reputa- 
tion for  biilliant  scholarship  which  lingers  still  as  one 
of  the  brightest  traditions  of  this  Seminary.  Dr.  C. 
W.  Hodge,  during  thirty-one  years,  impressed  upon  the 
students  his  own  masterly  methods  of  exact  and  impar- 
tial exegesis,  his  loyalty  to  the  Scripture  wiiilc  thor- 
oughly conversant  with  every  phase  of  critical  doubt 
and  attack,  and  his  profound  insight  into  the  historical 
life  of    Him    who    is  the  Alpha  and   Omega    of  the 


1 6  Si.  Paul  and  Inspiration. 

Word.  To  his  instruction  and  example  I  am  myself 
indebted  more,  perhaps,  than  to  any  other  teacher,  and 
I  learned  from  him  to  have  so  high  an  ideal  of  the 
work  which  this  chair  requires  as  to  feel  the  more  tim- 
idity in  undertaking  it.  To  follow  in  the  steps  of  these 
truly  great  men  seems  to  me  so  bold  an  undertaking 
that  only  your  unanimous  call  justifies  me  in  attempt- 
ing it. 

(2).  In  the  second  place,  my  experience  in  the  min- 
istry has,  year  by  year,  impressed  upon  me  the  immense 
importance  for  the  clergy  of  training  in  exegetical 
methods.  That  preaching  which  will  not  only  do  the 
most  good,  but  really  be  the  most  interesting  to 
average  congregations,  is  and  always  will  be  essentially 
an  exposition  of  the  Bible.  But  it  is  exegetical  train- 
ing which  secures  to  the  expositor  insight  into  the 
deeper  significance  of  the  Word,  richness  of  thought, 
freedom  from  crude  and  offensive  fancies,  as  well 
as  power  of  doctrinal  demonstration,  and  these  are 
qualities  which  can  hardly  fail  to  make  the  preacher  an 
acceptable  and  attractive  spiritual  guide  of  his  fellow- 
men.  And,  besides  this  effect  upon  preaching,  it  has 
been  my  observation  that  the  clerical  mind  possesses  in 
its  exegetical  training,  so  far  as  that  exists,  the  best 
corrective  of  the  religious  doubts  by  which  it  is  often 
itself  misled  and  the  means  of  misleading  others. 
It  must  be  confessed,  I  think,  that  many  ministers  are 
more  occupied  with  books  about  the  Bible  than  with 
patient,  scientific  examination  of  the  Bible  itself.  Hence 
they  are  led  to  speculate,  rather  than  to  interpret ;  to 
theorize  in  theology,  rather  than  to  grasp  in  its  fulness 
the  contents  of  revelation.  I  have  frequently  noticed 
that  training  in  precise  exegesis  of  Scripture,  strength- 


S^.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  1 7 

ening,  as  this  always  does,  a  man's  sense  of  the  author- 
ity of  Scripture,  will  effectively  resist  the  first  assault 
of  doubt,  and  so  prevent  speculative  scepticism  from 
finding  an  open  field.  To  aid  in  training  our  ministry  in 
the  habit  of  exact  and  fair  exegesis  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment appears  to  me,  therefore,  a  work  of  the  very  highest 
practical  value. 

(3).  And,  thirdly,  I  turn  with  the  more  eagerness  to  the 
work  of  the  department  of  New  Testament  Literature  and 
Exegesis  because  of  the  exceeding  interest  and  supreme 
importance  for  the  Christian  faith  of  the  problems  con- 
nected with  it.  Here  we  deal  with  the  origin  of  Chris- 
tianity itself.  Here  we  stand  face  to  face  with  its  his- 
torical Founder,  and  must  vividly  realize  through  His 
life  and  word,  as  with  every  instrument  of  careful 
study  we  examine  them,  the  most  real  divinity  which 
breathes  on  us,  as  on  the  first  disciples,  through  His  most 
real  humanity.  Here  we  are  confronted  most  plainly 
with  the  supernatural  in  history,  and  are  bound  to 
make  manifest  the  impregnable  rock  of  well-accredited 
fact  on  which  belief  in  the  supernatural,  in  both  phi- 
losophy and  practical  life,  must  ultimately  rest.  And 
here  we  study  directly  those  shaping  forces,  whether 
embodied  in  men  or  books,  which  seem  to  us  most 
evidently  the  effluence  of  God,  since  out  of  them  all 
that  is  heavenly  in  human  life  has  come.  It  is  true 
that  just  now  popular  attention  is  fixed  with  unusual 
interest  on  the  Old  Testament,  and  I  have  no  wish  to 
exalt  one  part  of  Biblical  study  above  another.  But  the 
problems  of  New  Testament  history  and  criticism  will 
never  cease  to  command  our  devotion.  As  Dr.  Sanday, 
of  Oxford,  has  lately  written  {Expositor,  May,  1892): 
"There  have  been  great  ages,  'spacious  times.'  up  and 


1 8  S/.  Paid  and  Inspiration. 

down  the  world's  career — the  age  of  Pericles,  the  age 
of  Augustus,  the  years  which  date  from  the  Hegira  of 
Mahomet  or  from  the  fall  of  Constantinople,  the  out- 
burst of  genius  and  national  life  under  our  own  Queen 
Elizabeth.  But  in  internal  significance,  if  not  in  out- 
ward splendour,  there  is  no  age  to  compare  with  that 
which  began  in  the  fifteenth  year  of  Tiberius  with  a  set 
of  obscure  events  in  an  obscure  corner  of  Jud?ea,  and 
which  came  to  its  close  with  the  death  of  the  last 
apostle,  St.  John."  New  Testament  students  have  this 
advantage,  that  the  long  battle  between  those  who  as- 
sert and  those  who  deny  the  essential  trustworthiness  of 
the  New  Testament  as  a  witness  to  the  origin  of  Chris- 
tianity, may  be  fairly  said  to  have  been  won.  Of 
course,  sceptics  remain  and  critical  assaults  continue. 
But  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  bring  our  Gospels  into 
the  second  century  or  for  reasonable  men  to  deny  that 
apostolic  history  was  at  least  substantially  what  we 
have  always  claimed  it  was ;  while  every  new  discovery 
in  Christian  archaeology,  as  well  as  every  critical  inves- 
tigation of  the  witnesses  for  the  New  Testament  text, 
drive  new  nails  into  the  coffins  wherein  the  myth  and 
legend  theories  of  early  Christianity  have  already  been 
laid.  But  these  results  only  serve  to  bring  the  New 
Testament  student  into  closer  contact  with  men  and 
forces,  movements  and  literature  which  evoke  problems 
all  the  more  attractive  because  the  subjects  of  them  are 
assuredly  known  to  be  real ;  while  a  multitude  of  ques- 
tions, subordinate  to  that  of  the  essential  trustworthi- 
ness of  the  story,  but  none  the  less  vital  to  a  right 
conception  of  Christianity,  are  still  issues  of  the  hour. 
The  mutual  relations  and  actual  formation  of  the 
Synoptic   Gospels,  the  historical  value  of  the  Fourth, 


S^.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  19 

the  genuineness  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles  involving 
our  idea  of  the  apostolic  age, — these  are  specimens  of 
the  questions  now  mooted  and  of  manifest  importance. 
Not  that  I  would  by  any  means  have  the  student  of 
New  Testament  literature  suppose  that  these  critical 
problems  are  to  command  his  chief  attention.  The 
study  of  the  New  Testament  itself  should  be  and  is  to 
be  our  main  work.  But  these  critical  questions  must 
necessarily  be  discussed,  and  the  relation  of  them  to 
our  conception  of  Christianity  is  often  so  vital  that  our 
very  faith  in  the  Gospel  of  Christ  and  Paul  gives  to 
them  unspeakable  interest  in  thoughtful  minds. 

It  is,  therefore,  with  these  deep  impressions  of  the 
greatness  of  the  work  entrusted  to  me  that  I  shall 
enter  upon  its  duties,  depending  entirely  on  the  prom- 
ised Spirit  of  our  Lord  for  wisdom  to  discharge  them, 
and  earnestly  desiring  to  aid  my  younger  brethren  in 
the  ministry  to  present  effectively  to  their  fellow-men 
that  Christ  and  that  Gospel  which  the  New  Testament 
reveals. 

ST.    PAUL    AND    INSPIRATION. 

It  is  appropriate  for  me  on  this  occasion  to  address 
you  on  some  topic  connected  with  the  particular  disci- 
pline which  I  am  to'  teach.  The  department  has  a 
double  name, — "  New  Testament  Literature  and  Exe- 
gesis." The  double  name  indicates  two  points  of  view 
from  which  the  New  Testament  is  to  be  studied.  The 
first  is  historical  and  literary ;  the  second  is  hermeneu- 
tical.  The  two,  however,  naturally  go  together.  Tliev 
are  the  two  eyes  by  which  the  student's  mind  gains  a 
correct  impression  of  the  object.     The  student  of  the 


20  S/.  Paul  and  hispiratiojt. 

literature  must  be  an  exegete,  and  the  exegete  must  be 
a  student  of  the  literature,  if  his  interpretation  of  the 
Testament  is  to  be  complete.  I  propose,  therefore,  to 
select  an  historical  centre  for  my  address  and  use  it  to 
exhibit  certain  exegetical  results  which  in  their  turn 
will  indicate  the  spirit,  in  which,  as  I  apprehend,  the 
study  of  the  New  Testament  should  be  pursued. 

Now,  when  looking  at  the  New  Testament  collec- 
tion, we  find  ourselves  confronted  by  one  personality  in 
particular  who,  next  to  Christ  himself,  is  impressed 
most  largely  and  weightily  both  upon  the  New  Testa- 
ment and  upon  historic  Christianity.  I  refer,  of  course, 
to  the  apostle  of  the  Gentiles.  Of  him  the  student  of 
the  New  Testament  must  take  particular  account.  He 
is  the  author  of  certainly  thirteen,  and  perhaps  of  four- 
teen, of  the  twenty-seven  books.  His  epistles  consti- 
tute that  part  of  the  Testament  which  gives  to  it 
articulated  theological  structure.  He  was  the  man 
who  opened  the  door  by  which  the  world  entered  into 
the  fold  of  Christ.  His  mission  made  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  a  universal  religion.  And  yet  he  is  one  whose 
right  to  the  place  traditionally  assigned  him  has,  in  vari- 
ous ways  in  different  ages,  been  hotly  contested.  His 
own  epistles  show  that  in  his  lifetime  itself  his  apostle- 
ship  was  denied  and  his  mission  violently  opposed  by 
many  who  claimed  to  be  followers  of  Jesus.  In  the 
succeeding  age  we  not  only  find  the  extreme  section  of 
Jewish  Christians  continuing  to  deny  hisapostleship,  but 
we  find  the  singular  and  significant  fact  that,  while  the 
orthodox  church  acknowledged  and  honored  him,  used 
his  epistles  as  Scripture  and  reaped  the  benefit  of  his 
mission  to  the  Gentiles,  yet  it  apparently  did  not  grasp 
his  real  teaching,  and,   if  its  extant  literature  may  be 


Sf.  Pmil  and  Inspiration.  21 

trusted  as  evidence,  rejected  some  of  his  fundamental 
theological  principles.     Later  on,  his  distinctive  theo- 
logical  ideas  were   for  centuries   rejected   by  the  larger 
part  of  Christendom,  even  after  they  had  been  success- 
fully defended    by   Augustine    and    formally   acknowl- 
edged by  the  Church;  while  modern  "liberalism"  is  as 
loud  as  the  ancient  Judaizers  were  in  its  rejection  of 
Paul's  interpretation  of  the  Gospel,  and  seeks  to  save 
itself  from  utter  irreligion  by  endeavoring  to  prove  that 
this  apostle  clothed  the  ethical  teaching  of  Jesus  in  the 
sombre  and  alien  garb  of  rabbinical  theology.     Con- 
sidered,   moreover,   from  the  point   of    view  of    New 
Testament    Literature,  the    personality  and    career   of 
Paul  are  confessedly  singular  and  demand  critical  study. 
He  appears  on   the   field,  suddenly  intruding  into   the 
circle    of    original    apostles,    and    mastering  it    by  the 
success  of  his  work  and  the   force  of  his  credentials. 
On  any  view  of  the  origin   of  Christianity  his   influ- 
ence appears  gigantic.     Baur  called  him  the  creator  of 
historical    Christianity.      The   very    language    of    the 
Church  was  molded  by  his  vigorous  mind,  for,  as  Reuss 
(^Hist.  of  Christ.    ThcoL  in  Apost.  Age,  vol.  ii.,  p.  9) 
says,   "  It  was  Paul  who  imprinted  on  the  Hellenistic 
idiom  its  peculiarly  Christian  character,  and  he  was  thus 
in  a  manner  the  creator  of  the  theological  language  of 
the  church."     The  student  of  the  New  Testament  may 
feel   Paul's  influence  in  the   third    Gospel  and   in  the 
epistles  of  Peter  even  as  the  student  of  the  Christian 
origins  finds  in   him  a  potent  factor    in    the   history. 
Altogether,  he  must  be  particularly  investigated.     The 
question  of  his  authority  as  an  apostle  of  Jesus  Christ 
is  a  crucial   one.     Its  reality,   its  extent,   its   inspired 
quality,— these  are  matters  which  fundamentally  affect 


2  2  SL  Paul  and  Inspiration. 

our  conception  alike  of  early  Christian  history,  and  of 
present  Christian  doctrine,  and  of  the  Bible  itself.  It 
may  be  truly  said  that  our  apprehension  of  Christianity 
depends  upon  our  apprehension  of  Paul.  I  have,  of 
course,  no  intention  of  exalting  him  above  the  other 
apostles  or  of  forgetting  their  part  in  the  formation 
of  the  New  Testament,  of  the  Church,  or  of  Chris- 
tian doctrine.  But  his  exceptional  history,  his  pecu- 
liar work,  his  dominating  influence,  together  with  the 
particular  distinctness  of  his  teaching  and  its  intimate 
relation  to  the  fundamental  ideas  which  we  are  to 
form  of  the  religion  of  Christ,  make  the  question  of 
his  authority  and  inspiration  worthy  of  separate  dis- 
cussion. 

I  propose,  therefore,  to  consider  the  testimony 
which  Paul  himself  gave  to  his  consciousness  of 
apostolic  office,  his  right  to  the  place  assigned  him  in 
our  Testament,  and  then  to  indicate  the  consequences 
which  follow  from  this  as  concerns  our  conception  of 
the  New  Testament  itself 

I.  First,  then,  as  students  of  the  New  Testament, 
seeking  simply  to  know  what  it  actually  contains,  let  us 
interrogate  Paul  himself  with  reference  to  his  claims  of 
authority  and  inspiration. 

Rationalistic  critics  are,  of  course,  under  the  necessity 
of  reducing  the  consciousness  of  St.  Paul  to  a  natural 
growth.  They  cannot  admit  the  supernatural,  in  any  real, 
objective  sense,  to  have  entered  into  his  experience.  His 
teaching  and  his  activity  must  be  explained  as  in  some 
way  the  product  of  more  or  less  rational  processes.  He 
must,  in  short,  be  represented  as  at  once  the  victim  of 
hallucination   about   himself    and  the  herald  of  world- 


67.  Paul  and  Inspiratioji.  23 

changing  truth.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that,  according  to 
the  rationalistic  explanation  of  sacred  history,  the 
greatest  spiritual  gains  to  humanity  have  always  been 
the  outgrowth  of  illusion  and  mistake.  For  the  New 
Testament  student  is  confronted,  first  of  all,  by  Paul's 
unequivocal  testimony  to  his  infallible  authority  as  a 
teacher  of  faith  and  duty,  and  to  his  special  inspiration 
by  God.  This  testimony,  moreover,  is  particularly 
borne  in  those  great  doctrinal  epistles,  written  during 
the  middle  part  of  his  missionary  activity,  the  genuine 
ness  of- which  even  inveterate  doubters  do  not  deny, — 
for  the  recent  denials  of  their  genuineness  by  a  few 
eccentric  scholars,  chiefly  of  the  Dutch  school,  are  based 
on  too  exclusively  a  priori  reasoning  to  be  worthy  of 
serious  consideration.  It  will,  therefore,  not  be  neces- 
sary for  me  to  discuss  the  genuineness  of  his  later  epis- 
tles ;  since  no  essential  point  of  his  self-testimony  is  in- 
volved in  them. 

Permit  me  rapidly  to  summarize  his  statements  upon 
this  subject. 

(i).  We  have  from  him  in  the  first  place  repeated  and 
positive  testimony  that  the  objectively  supernatural 
played  a  large  part  and  the  decisive  part  in  his  Christian 
experience.  He  explicitly  attributes,  not  only  his  per- 
sonal salvation  to  the  mighty  power  and  wondrous 
grace  of  God,  but  his  cardinal  religious  ideas  to  reve- 
lations directly  made  to  him.  The  pivotal  fact  of  his 
career  was,  he  tells  us,  the  glorious  appearance  of  Christ 
to  him  when  on  the  way  to  Damascus,  and  there  can 
be  no  question  that  he  regarded  that  appearance  as  ob- 
jectively real.  In  connection  with  that  event  he  claimed 
to  have  received  explicit  directions  for  his  work  and 
apostolic    authority    in   it.      He   was   "an   apostle   not 


24  •^'A   Paul  and  Inspiration. 

from  men,  neither  through  man,  but  through  Jesus 
Christ  and  God  the  Father"  (Gal.  i.  i).  Hence  he  de- 
scribes himself  as  "  called  to  be  an  apostle  "  (Rom.  i. 
I  ;  I  Cor.  i.  i),  "  an  apostle  by  the  will  of  God  "  (i  Cor. 
i.  I  ;  2  Cor.  ii.  i  ;  Eph.  i.  i  ;  Col.  i.  i  ;  2  Tim.  i.  i);  an 
apostle  "  by  the  commandment  of  God  "  (i  Tim.  i.  i), 
"  separated  unto  the  Gospel  of  God  "  (Rom.  i.  i).  But 
this  pivotal  fact  was  by  no  means  the  only  supernatural 
experience  to  which  he  laid  claim.  Not  to  mention 
the  miraculous  gifts  which  he  possessed  in  common  with 
other  Christians  of  the  apostolic  age  (i  Cor.  xiv.  18), 
he  asserts  that  his  religious  doctrines  had  been  immedi- 
ately revealed  to  him.  "  The  Gospel  which  was 
preached  by  me  is  not  after  man.  For  neither  did  I 
receive  it  from  man,  nor  was  I  taught  it ;  but  it  came 
to  me  through  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ"  (Gal.  i.  11, 
12.  So,  cf.  I  Cor.  xi.  23  ;  xv.  -^^  ;  xvi.  25  ;  Eph.  iii.  3). 
Visions,  he  tells  us,  were  granted  unto  him  (2  Cor.  xi. 
16  ;  xii.  1-4),  and  future  events  had  in  some  particulars 
been  disclosed  (i  Thess.  iv.  15  ;  2  Thess.  ii.  3  ;  i  Cor. 
XV.  51).  All  this  culminates  in  the  general  declaration 
"  that  by  revelation  was  made  known  unto  me  ....  the 
mystery  of  Christ :  which  in  other  generations  was  not 
made  known  unto  the  sons  of  men  as  it  is  now  made 
known  unto  his  holy  apostles  and  prophets  by  the 
Spirit"  (Eph.  iii.  3,  5).  Thus  a  special  "grace"  had 
been  bestowed  upon  him,  the  grace  of  apostleship  with 
all  the  endowments,  spiritual  and  supernatural,  necessary 
to  fit  him  for  the  office  (Gal.  ii.  9  ;  Rom.  i.  5,  xv.  15  ; 
Eph.  iii.  3,  7  ;  2  Cor.  iii.  5)  ;  and  on  the  basis  of  this 
immediate  divine  gift  he  emphatically  declares  his  inde- 
pendence, so  far  as  the  ground  of  his  right  to  be  obeyed 
was  concerned,  of  any  man,  even  though  it  were  one  of 


6'/.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  25 

the  original  apostles  (Gal.  i.  6,  11).  With  them  he 
claimed  to  stand  on  terms  of  entire  equality  (2  Cor.  xi. 
5;  xii.  11),  both  they  and  he  having  been  directly 
inv^ested  with  authority  by  the  same  Lord  (i  Cor.  ix.  i). 

It  is  manifest  that  Paul  was  very  far  from  regarding 
either  the  change  in  his  personal  attitude  to  Jesus  or  his 
new  religious  ideas  as  the  result  of  rational  processes  of 
his  own  mind.  Not  indeed  that  his  intellectual  activity 
was  in  abeyance.  Far  from  it.  On  the  truth  once 
revealed  he  keenly  and  intensely  thought,  though,  as  we 
shall  see,  believing  himself  even  in  that  thought  not  to 
be  unaided  from  on  high.  But  his  testimony  to  object- 
ive revelations,  actually  and  frequently  received,  is 
unequivocal.  It  is  noteworthy  also  that  these  consisted 
not  of  visions  of  the  other  world,  of  which  he  has  given 
no  description  ;  and  very  little  of  hitherto  unrevealed 
future  events ;  but  supremely  and  constantly  of  those 
religious  truths  which  men  now  call  theological,  but 
which  he  called  summarily  his  "Gospel."  This,  he 
said,  was  what  had  been  "  entrusted  to  him  "  (i  Th.  ii.  4  ; 
Gal.  ii.  7  ;  i  Cor.  iv.  i,  ix.  17;  2  Cor.  v.  18;  Rom.  i. 
14;  Col.  i.  25  ;  I  Tim.  i.  11  ;  2  Tim.  i.  11).  To  use 
one  of  his  own  expressive  phrases,  "  the  word  of  recon- 
ciliation had  been  placed  in  him"  (2  Cor.  v.  19).  This 
is  not  the  usual  way  of  mystics  or  enthusiasts,  and  it  re- 
mains for  those  who  deny  Paul's  self-testimony  on  this 
point  to  explain  the  psychological  enigma  which  their 
denial  creates. 

(2).  But,  still  further,  Paul  claimed  not  only  object- 
ive revelation,  but  a  special  subjective  illumination 
of  his  mind  by  the  divine  Spirit,  so  that  he  was  en- 
abled correctly  to  teach  the  word  of  God.  True,  he 
recopfnizes  that  all  Christians  are  "  tauo;ht  of  God  to 


.-26  Si.  Paul  and  Lispiration. 

^love  one  another"  (i  Thess.  iv.  9),  and  we  find  him, 
with  beautiful  wisdom  and  courtesy,  seeking  rather  to 
urge  his  readers  to  a  full  understanding  by  themselves 
of  what  was  involved  in  the  truth  they  had  received, 
than,  as  he  himself  puts  it,  "  to  lord  it  over  their  faith  " 
(2  Cor.  i.  24),  for  he  adds,  "  by  faith  ye  stand."  But  he 
plainly  claims  for  the  apostles,  and  in  particular  for  him- 
self, as  one  of  them,  a  special  divine  illumination,  different 
both  from  the  objective  revelations  they  had  received, 
and  from  the  Spirit's  teaching  granted  to  all  believers, 
and  on  the  ground  of  which  the  apostle's  instruc- 
tions were  to  be  received  as  final  because  divine.  He 
does  this  most  explicitly  in  his  epistles  to  the  Corinth- 
ians. Speaking  of  the  "  hidden  mystery," — by  which 
he  meant  the  things  of  our  salvation, — he  says  emphat- 
ically, "  Unto  us  God  revealed  them  by  his  Spirit"  (i 
Cor.  ii.  10).  The  context  shows  that  by  "us"  he 
meant  himself  and  other  apostles  ;  and  the  subsequent 
verses  show  that  this  revelation  included  more  than  the 
objective  communication  of  truth.  For  he  continues, 
"  who  among  men  knoweth  the  things  of  a  man,  save 
the  spirit  of  the  man,  which  is  in  him  ?  Even  so  the 
things  of  God  none  knoweth  save  the  Spirit  of  God. 
But  we  received  not  the  spirit  of  the  world,  but  the 
Spirit  which  is  of  God,  that  we  might  know  the  things 
that  are  freely  given  to  us  of  God," — i.  e.,  the  apostolic 
teacher  was  enabled  by  the  Holy  Spirit  rightly  to  appre- 
hend the  revelation  given  to  him.  Hence  he  could  say 
without  audacity,  "  we  have  the  mind  of  Christ"  (i  Cor. 
ii.  16).  Hence  also  in  the  second  epistle,  speaking  of 
his  apostolic  authority  and  defending  himself  against 
detractors,  he  could  write,  "  we  preach  Christ  Jesus  as 
Lord,  and  ourselves  as  your  servants  for  Jesus'  sake, — see- 


S^.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  27 

ing  it  is  God  that  said,  Light  shall  shine  out  of  darkness, 
who  shined  in  our  hearts  to  give  the  light  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ" 
(2  Cor.  iv.  6).  Though  these  words  may  be  properly 
applied  to  all  believers,  the  reader  cannot  fail  to  see  that 
Paul  applied  them  in  a  special  sense  to  himself  as  a 
divinely  enlightened  teacher,  as  one  in  whose  mind  the 
Almighty  Creator  of  all  light  had  shined  for  the  express 
purpose  of  making  the  knowledge  of  His  glory  in  the 
face  of  Christ  known  to  other  men ;  and  this  was  to 
such  an  extent  true  that  he  could  also  write,  "  if  any 
man  thinketh  himself  to  be  a  prophet  or  spiritual,  let 
him  take  knowledge  of  the  things  that  I  write  unto  you, 
that  they  are  the  commandments  of  the  Lord"  (i  Cor. 

xiv.  35)- 

Moreover  we  find  him,  in  i  Cor.  vii.,  where  he  deals 
with  the  subject  of  marriage,  carefully  distinguishing 
between  the  known  command  of  Christ  about  divorce  ; 
his  own  command  on  the  subject,  which  he  makes  as 
obligatory  as  the  Lord's  ;  and  his  advice  to  certain  of 
them  in  view  of  "the  present  distress."  Even  his 
advice  was  inspired,  for,  after  giving  it,  he  adds  with  a 
touch  of  irony,  "  I  think  that  I  also  have  the  Spirit  of 
God."  Nevertheless  it  was  advice,  not  command  ;  and 
the  ability  to  thus  discriminate  between  what  was  obli- 
gatory and  what  was  advisable  indicates  a  perfectly  clear 
perception  of  what,  apart  from  specific  revelations,  he 
was  authorized  by  God  to  require  of  them  and  what  not. 

So  far  then  as  his  own  testimony  goes,  Paul  asserted 
not  only  a  divine  commission  and  divine  revelations, 
but  such  an  illumination  by  the  Holy  Spirit  that  he  could 
say,  "  God  doth  beseech  you  by  us  "  (2  Cor.  v.  20),  and 
"  Christ  speaketh  in  me  "  (2  Cor.  xiii.  3). 


28  S/.  Paul  and  Inspiration. 

(3).  It  is  little  to  observe  after  this  that  the  apostle 
claimed  authority  over  the  faith  and  conduct  of  Chris- 
tians. Thoui^h  he  associates  other  brethren  with  him 
in  his  epistles,  he  always  puts  himself  above  them  (i 
Thess.  i.  I  ;  2  Thess.  i.  i  ;  2  Cor.  i.  i  ;  Col.  i.  i). 
Though  both  Apollos  and  he  were  ministers  of  Christ, 
he  and  not  Apollos  was  a  founder  of  the  Church :  and 
his  language  conveys  the  idea  that  not  merely  because 
he  was  in  Corinth  before  Apollos,  but  because  he  held 
a  different  office,  was  he  the  founder  of  that  Church  (i 
Cor.  iii.  10-14).  He  habitually  speaks  of  his  "  Gospel  " 
in  terms  applicable  to  nothing  less  than  the  full  mani- 
festation of  divine,  saving  truth  (i  Thess.  i.  5  ;  2  Thess. 
ii.  14  ;  2  Cor.  iv.  3,  4  ;  Rom.  ii.  16,  xv.  25  ;  2  Tim.  ii.  8). 
In  fact  he  identifies  it  with  "the  word  of  the  Lord"  (i 
Thess.  i.  8,  ii.  13  ;  2  Thess.  iii.  i),  declaring  in  one  place 
(i  Thess.  ii.  13),  "  we  thank  God  that  when  ye  received 
from  us  the  word  of  the  message,  even  the  word  of  God, 
ye  accepted  it,  not  as  the  word  of  men,  but  as  it  is  in 
truth  the  word  of  God,  which  also  worketh  in  you  that 
believe."  He  warns  against  any  who  taught  contrary  to 
what  they  had  received  from  him,  yea  though  the  teacher 
were  an  angel  from  heaven  or  the  apostle  himself  (2 
Thess.  ii.  2  ;  Gal.  i.  8,  9).  Alike  in  matters  of  faith  and 
conduct  does  he  speak  in  an  unfaltering  tone  of  abso- 
lute command. 

(4).  It  is  more  important  to  observe  that  he  attached 
the  same  authority  to  his  letters  as  to  his  oral  teaching, 
and  to  the  verbal  form  in  which  his  teaching  was  ex- 
pressed no  less  than  to  the  truth  itself.  Besides  direct- 
ing the  reading  and  circulation  of  his  epistles  (i  Thess. 
iv.  27  ;  Col.  iv.  16, 17),  he  says  expressly  (2  Thess.  ii.  15), 
"brethren,  stand  fast  and  hold  the  traditions  which  ye 


S/.  Paid  and  Inspiration.  29 

were  taught  whether  by  word  or  by  epistle  of  ours."  As 
to  the  verbal  form  of  his  teaching,  his  language  is  like- 
wise unmistakable  (i  Cor.  ii.  13).  "  Which  things  also," 
— i.  e.,  the  knowledge  given  to  the  apostles  by  the 
Spirit, — "we  speak  not  in  words  which  man's  wisdom 
teacheth,  but  which  the  Spirit  teacheth, — combining 
spiritual  things  with  spiritual."  That  this  statement  is 
to  be  interpreted  in  any  such  way  as  to  make  the  apos- 
tle represent  himself  as  a  mechanical,  unthinking  agent 
of  the  Spirit  is  both  disproved  by  all  the  phenomena  of 
his  writings,  and  is  positively  forbidden  by  the  phrase  it- 
self, "  words  which  the  Spirit  teacheth  ";  for  a  machine 
cannot  be  taught,  it  can  be  only  used.  But  it  is  equally 
plain  that  Paul  felt  even  the  verbal  forms,  in  which  with 
the  full  use  of  his  own  intellect  and  heart,  and  often  in 
most  characteristic  and  peculiar  style,  he  uttered  the 
message  that  God  had  given  him,  to  have  been  also 
determined  for  him  by  the  Spirit.  He  represented  his 
whole  communication  to  men  as  "pneumatic," — as  the 
Spirit's  work  throughout ;  and  therefore  in  all  its  ele- 
ments the  communication  to  men  not  of  Paul's  thouo-ht. 
— that  was  only  the  medium, — but  the  communication 
of  the  mind  and  will  of  God.  As  certainly  as  the 
phrase,  "  words  which  man's  wisdom  teacheth,"  describes 
the  rhetorical  dress  and  mode  of  argument  and  literary 
style  which  Hellenic  culture  would  have  suggested,  so 
certainly  does  he  mean  in  the  corresponding  phrase, 
"  words  which  the  Spirit  teacheth,"  to  say  that  the 
rhetoric  and  the  argument  and  the  style  which  he  did 
employ  were  in  some  way,  which  he  does  not  explain, 
suggested,  indicated,  brought  to  his  mind  by  the  Holy 
Spirit. 

(5).  At  the  same  time,  be  it  noted,  there  never  was  a 


30  S^.  Patcl  and  Inspiration. 

more  living  writer  than  Paul,  and  his  testimony  is 
equally  clear  that,  with  all  the  authority  and  divine 
guidance  which  he  claimed,  he  was  always  himself. 
His  self-consciousness,  in  fact,  is  very  marked,  since  he 
regarded  himself  as  a  typical  example  of  grace,  and 
since  he  was  compelled  to  defend  his  character  and  his 
claims.  His  personality  was  intense.  The  "  I,  Paul,  say 
unto  you"  is  very  frequent.  He  testifies  to  nothing 
mechanical  in  the  operations  of  divine  power  within  his 
mind,  but  quite  to  the  contrary.  His  writings  them- 
selves bear  sufficient  witness  to  his  intellectual  activity, 
his  strong  and  sensitive  emotions,  his  quickness  to  dis- 
cern the  practical  relations  of  his  teaching.  His  testi- 
mony to  the  living  reality  of  his  experience  under 
grace,  and  while  the  subject  of  revealing  and  inspiring 
power,  is  as  clear  as  is  his  testimony  to  that  power  itself. 
And  to  this  should  be  added  the  remark  that  he  recog- 
nized the  limitations  of  his  knowledge.  The  Spirit  did 
not  always  quicken  his  memory,  for  he  writes  of  his  life 
in  Corinth :  "  I  baptized  also  the  household  of  Stepha- 
nas: besides  I  know  not  whether  I  baptized  any  other" 
(i  Cor.  i.  1 6).  Neither  did  he  claim  perfect  compre- 
hension of  the  truth,  for  he  could  say,  "Now  I  know 
in  part ;  but  then  shall  I  know  even  as  also  I  am 
known"  (i  Cor.  xiii.  ii).  But  this  confession  of  limits 
to  knowledge  only  makes  the  more  significant  his  assei- 
tions  of  clear  and  authoritative  knowledge  as  to  what 
had  been  given  him  to  affirm  and  teach.  It  indicates  a 
calm  and  sober  appreciation  of  just  what  God  authorized 
him  to  say  and  what  he  did  not,  which  is  at  the  farthest 
possible  remove  from  either  a  machine  or  an  enthusiast. 
"This  treasure,"  he  says,  speaking  of  the  divine  light 
which  God  had   made  to  shine  within   his  mind,  "  we 


S^.  Paid  and  Inspiration.  31 

have  in  earthen  vessels,  that  the  exceeding  greatness  of  the 
power  may  be  of  God  and  not  of  us"  (2  Cor.  iv.  7).  By 
the  "earthen  vessel"  he  did  not  mean,  as  he  has  some- 
times been  interpreted,  the  human  element  in  his  writings, 
their  words  and  arguments.  These,  as  we  have  seen,  he 
regarded  as  part  of  the  treasure  itself.  But,  as  the  con- 
text shows,  he  meant  by  "the  earthen  vessel,"  the 
external  trials  and  the  personal  misfortunes  of  his  life, — 
for  he  was  "always,"  he  added,  "bearing  about  in  his 
body  the  dying  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  that  the  life  also  of 
Jesus  might  be  made  manifest  in  our  mortal  flesh."  To 
the  Jews  a  renegade,  to  the  Athenians  a  babbler, 
"the  offscouring  of  the  earth"  in  the  eyes  of  the  busy, 
fighting,  cultured,  careless  Roman  world, — Paul  claimed 
that  he  possessed  a  gift  from  Almighty  God  which 
made  him  a  true  prophet  of  Israel,  an  unerring 
teacher  of  the  wnse,  and  an  authoritative  expounder  of 
the  only  way  of  salvation  for  mankind. 

Such  I  believe  to  be  a  fair  statement  of  Paul's 
apostolic  consciousness  as  exegesis  gives  it  to  us.  Thus 
he  appears  on  the  field  of  New  Testament  literature. 
This  is  the  only  Paul  of  which  we  know.  It  may  be 
conceivable  that  he  was  an  utterly  mistaken  man,  but 
he  cannot  be  treated  as  pretending  to  be  different  from 
what  we  have  described. 

II.  Can,  then,  these  claims  be  justified  to  us  so  that, 
as  students  of  New  Testament  literature,  we  may  accept 
Paul's  epistles  as  a  constituent  part  of  the  sacred  Scrip- 
tures, and  Paul  himself  as  the  authorized  exponent  of 
genuine  Christianity  which  he  claimed  to  be  ? 

We  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  objections  brought 
by  avowed  naturalism  are  to  be  immediately  set  aside. 


32  S^.  Paul  and  hispiration. 

Wc  come  to  the  examination  of  New  Testament  liter- 
ature, believing  in  the  possibility  of  miracles,  and  even, 
under  certain  circumstances,  in  their  probability.  Above 
all,  we  come  as  convinced  believers  in  an  historical 
incarnation  and  resurrection.  Our  belief  in  this  may 
be  defended  quite  independently  of  Paul's  claims  to 
authority  and  inspiration.  He  may  be  regarded  as  mis- 
taken in  these  and  yet  may  constitute  one  of  the  many 
witnesses  to  the  original  belief  of  the  primitive  church, 
and,  as  such,  one  of  many  facts  which  only  an  actual 
incarnation  and  resurrection  can  explain.  Fairness 
does  not  require  us,  therefore,  to  profess  want  of  con- 
viction upon  these  points.  For  belief  in  the  incarna- 
tion and  resurrection  does  not  necessarily  carry  with  it 
the  admission  of  Paul's  specific  claims,  while  unbelief 
does  carry  with  it  the  denial  of  them. 

In  the  hands  of  naturalism,  moreover,  not  only  must 
Paul  appear  a  singularly  deluded  man  and  his  conver- 
sion remain  an  unexplained  enigma,  but  he  can  scarcely 
be  made  to  justify  the  place  he  has  occupied  among 
the  leaders  of  mankind.  When  Professor  Pfleiderer 
concludes  that  "  the  specially  Christian  and  permanent 
element  of  Paulinism"  was  the  fact  "that  it  was  an 
influence  bringing  freedom  and  inward  depth  to  the 
religious  life,  delivering  men  from  all  externalities  and 
uniting  them  directly  with  God  "  {Hibbert  Lectures, 
1885,  p.  287);  when  Mr.  Arnold,  trying  to  show  why 
Protestantism  should  still  uphold  the  honor  of  its 
favorite  apostle,  makes  Paul's  essential  merit  to  have 
been  that  he  was  possessed  with  a  zeal  for  righteous- 
ness {St.  Paul  and  Protestantisfu,  passim),  we  in- 
stinctively ask  why,  of  all  the  advocates  of  religious 
liberty   and   righteousness,   this   man   should   occupy  a 


S^.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  2)^ 

unique  position  in  history.  Manifestly  such  praise  is 
but  the  cloak  which  conceals  the  hand  of  the  assassin. 
Not  by  these  qualities  alone  has  Paul  actually  exerted 
his  decisive  influence  on  mankind. 

The  New  Testament  student,  therefore,  is  not  to 
approach  the  subject  without  faith  in  an  historical  reve- 
lation of  God  through  Jesus  Christ.  He  is  rather  to 
inquire  whether,  assuming  the  fact  of  a  supernatural 
revelation,  the  extraordinary  and  specific  claims  of  this 
intruder  into  the  original  circle  of  disciples  ought  to  be 
acknowledged. 

Without  attempting  to  do  more  than  give  an  outline 
of  the  argument,  the  following  reasons  appear  to  us 
conclusive. 

The  particular  credentials  by  which  Paul  himself 
appealed  to  his  own  converts  are  either  beyond  our 
power  of  testing  or  are  not  sufficiently  explicit  for  our 
present  purpose.  They  consisted  in  the  miraculous 
powers  with  which  he  was  endowed,  and,  above  all,  in 
the  Holy  Spirit  accompanying  his  ministry  and  sealing 
his  word  to  the  hearts  of  God's  elect  (i  Cor.  xii. 
12;  I  Thess.  i.  5  ;  I  Cor.  ii.  4-5).  The  former  we 
cannot  directly  verify.  The  witness  of  the  Spirit  to 
his  teaching  we  must  certainly,  if  Christian  men,  feel. 
It  has  been  largely  because  the  experience  of  Chris- 
tian life  bears  so  much  testimony  to  the  essential  truth 
of  his  doctrine  that  the  church,  even  when  willing,  has 
not  been  able,  to  deny  it.  Nevertheless,  the  Spirit's 
testimony  is  only  explicit  with  reference  to  Paul's  fun- 
damental doctrines.  On  the  basis  of  that  we  miofht 
indeed  infer  the  validity  of  all  his  claims.  But  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  form  in  which  he  couched  his 
teaching  has  been   impugned  even   by  those  who  pro- 


34  ^^'  P^ul  and  Inspiration. 

fess  to  acknowledge  the  latter,  and  the  dimness  of  the 
Christian  consciousness  is  such  that  it  is  easy  even  for 
Christian  men  to  question  the  full  validity  and  reality 
of  all  that  Paul  asserts  about  himself.  But  the  stu- 
dent of  New  Testament  literature  may,  we  think,  con- 
clusively furnish  two  other  lines  of  proof ;  first,  the 
fact  of  Paul's  recognition  as  an  apostle  by  the  original 
church  ;  and  secondly,  the  internal  relation  which  his 
teaching  bears  to  the  rest  of  Scripture. 

(i).  His  recognition  by  the  original  Church  is  a  fact 
of  first  value  because  it  affords  conclusive  evidence  that 
his  claims  were  admitted  by  the  other  apostles  and  thus 
that  the  first  founders  of  the  Church  confessed  the 
validity  of  his  credentials. 

On  this  point,  as  you  are  aware,  the  modern  critical 
assault  has  been  directed  ;  and  rightly  so,  if  the  super- 
natural character  of  Christianity  is  to  be  disproved. 
Baur  thrust  his  knife  into  the  vital  part  of  the  system 
when  he  undertook  to  prove  the  original  antagonism  of 
Paul  and  "the  twelve,"  and  to  explain  Catholic  Chris- 
tianity as  the  reconciliation,  150  years  later,  of  the 
originally  hostile  elements.  But  this  ingenious  recon- 
struction of  the  history  has  fallen  before  the  attack  of 
historical  investigation  itself  and  the  later  followers  of 
Tubingen  Criticism  have  been  forced  to  recede  from  so 
many  essential  positions  and  to  minimize  the  alleged 
division  of  the  apostolic  body  in  so  many  particulars 
that  the  theory  ought  to  have  little  weight  with  students 
of  the  New  Testament  and  of  post-apostolic  literature. 
For  the  unity  of  the  apostolic  body,  and  the  consequent 
recognition  of  Paul,  we  appeal  not  only  to  the  New  Tes- 
tament itself,  when  fairly  interpreted,  but  to  the  earliest 
extra-canonical   writers, — e.g.,    to    Clement  of    Rome, 


S^.   Paul  and  hispiration.  35 

writing  about  tlie  same  time  with  the  apostle  John 
(Ad  Cor.  5,  44,  47,  49),  who  appeals  expressly  to  Peter 
and  Paul  not  only  as  examples  of  righteousness,  but  as 
reproving  that  very  spirit  of  rivalry  with  which  modern 
criticism  charges  them,  and  mingles  their  words  together 
as  the  commandments  of  one  mind;  to  Ignatius,  writing 
perhaps  only  a  decade  later,  who  uses  this  language  :  "  I 
do  not  enjoin  you  as  Peter  and  Paul ;  they  were  apos- 
tles. I  am  but  a  condemned  man "  (Rom.  iv.)  ;  to 
Polycarp,  whose  imitative  pen  betrays  his  reverent  use  of 
the  writings  of  all  the  representative  apostles;  and,  pass- 
ing by  many  other  witnesses,  to  the  extensive  statements 
of  Irenseus  of  Lyons.  To  be  sure  these  ancient  authors 
were  not  writing  for  the  express  purpose  of  refuting 
beforehand  modern  naturalistic  criticism,  and  occasional 
difficulties  occur  in  the  evidence  which  have  been  made 
the  most  of.  The  most  recent  contention  is  that  the 
Epistles  of  Paul  were  not  considered  as  technically 
"Scripture"  by  the  Church  until  the  false  position  in 
which  Marcion  and  others  placed  him  required  his 
orthodoxy  to  be  vindicated  (see  Harnack's  Dogmenge- 
schichtc,  i.  304  ;  Werner's  Dcr  Paiclismus  des  Ire7icc2is). 
But  before  Marcion  wrote,  the  Epistles  of  Paul  were 
used  in  precisely  the  same  manner  as  other  books  of  the 
New  Testament  and  must  stand  or  fall  with  them  ; 
while  the  idea  that  Marcion  was  the  first  to  announce 
the  fact  that  God  had  given  to  the  Christian  Church  a 
written  rule  of  faith  in  addition  to  the  Old  Testament, 
attributes  far  too  much  originality  to  that  famous  heretic. 
We  admit,  indeed,  that  the  Church  of  the  second  and 
third  centuries  did  not  appropriate  the  doctrines  of 
grace  which  Paul  taught  with  anything  like  his  consist- 
ency.    But  that  has  been  no  unusual  phenomenon  in 


36  S/.  Paul  and  Inspiratio7i. 

Christian  history.  None  the  less  is  the  evidence  am- 
ple that,  while  Paul  derived  his  authority  from  no  man, 
and  while  his  course  was  opposed  by  many  Jewish 
Christians,  yet,  after  the  first  suspicions  were  overcome, 
as  the  book  of  Acts  relates,  the  Church  recognized  his 
credentials,  and  that  means  that  the  other  apostles 
recognized  them,  even  as  he  himself  declares.  If  so, 
then  whatever  authority  on  other  grounds  we  attach  to 
the  original  apostles  becomes  a  corresponding  attesta- 
tion of  Paul.  Were  they  merely  trustworthy  witnesses  ? 
They  witness  to  the  sufficiency  of  those  of  his  creden- 
tials which  we  cannot  examine.  Were  they  the  ac- 
knowledged founders  of  the  Church  ?  They  acknowl. 
edge  the  apostle  of  the  Gentiles  to  be  a  founder  too. 
Were  they  endowed  with  the  Spirit  to  be  the  authori- 
tative teachers  as  well  as  founders  of  the  Church  ? 
Then  they  admit  also  Paul's  claim  to  be  the  same  and 
his  epistles  to  be  part  of  the  Church's  abiding  rule. 

(2).  The  other  argument,  drawn  from  the  internal  re- 
lation which  Paul's  teaching  bears  to  the  rest  of  Scrip- 
ture, depends  on  the  results  of  exegesis. 

{a).  It  may  be  shown  that  his  teaching  is  a  legiti- 
mate unfolding  of  ideas  already  announced  in  the 
teachings  of  Jesus.  In  Christ's  declaration  of  the 
righteousness  which  must  exceed  that  of  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,  of  the  necessity  of  his  death  as  a  ransom  for 
sin,  of  the  wholly  lost  condition  of  mankind,  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  regeneration  and  of  the  Father's  "  drawing,"  of 
his  peculiarly  intimate  and  vital  relation  to  his  people 
based  on  the  Father's  gift  of  them  to  him  from  eternity, 
of  the  immediateness  and  completeness  of  the  reconcili- 
ation of  God  and  the  sinner  through  him,  and  of  the 
necessity  of  the  sinner's  dependence  upon  him  for  sal- 


S/.  Pa7il  and  Inspiration.  37 

vation,  it  is  easy  to  see  the  elements  of  Paul's  doctrine 
waiting  for  some  one  to  arrange  them  in  the  light  of 
the  full  significance  of  Calvary,  and  of  the  person  of  the 
risen  Lord. 

(b).  It  may  be  shown  further  that  his  doctrine  stands 
in  such  relation  of  that  of  the  other  apostolic  writers  as 
to  be  an  integral  and  necessary  part  of  the  apostolic 
teaching  as  a  whole  ;  forming  the  required  complement 
to  James,  one  of  the  presuppositions  of  Peter  and  the 
author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  with  these 
laying  the  foundation  on  which  John  stood,  with  his 
personal  remembrance  also  of  the  Lord's  discourses, 
to  set  forth  the  true  revelation  of  God  and  of  life  with 
God  which  the  Divine  Word  had  effected  and  in  the  dis- 
closure of  which  the  written  word  was  to  find  its  goal. 
The  more  closely  the  doctrines  of  the  several  apostolic 
writers  are  examined,  the  more  manifest  becomes  the 
one,  identical  truth  which,  with  rich  diversities  of  view, 
all  express ;  and  in  this  complex  organism  of  living 
truth  the  teaching  of  Paul  appears  as  the  vertebrate 
column  on  which  the  structure  of  the  whole  depends. 

{c).  And  then  it  may  be  shown,  finally,  that  Pauline 
doctrine,  as  the  apostle  himself  claimed,  is  a  legitimate 
unfolding  of  the  teachings  of  the  Old  Testament ;  a 
return  to  Moses  and  the  prophets  as  against  the  Scribes 
and  Pharisees  ;  that  he  built,  not  on  rabbinical  theology, 
but  on  the  principles  imbedded  in  the  Old  Testament, 
and  that,  strange  as  his  position  seemed  to  the  Jews  of 
his  day,  he  did  but  bring  to  complete  expression  the 
central  truths  of  Israel 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  do  more  than  indicate  these 
points  of  internal  relationship.  Their  full  working  out 
belongs  to    Biblical  Theology.     But  the  result  will,  I 


o 


8  S^.  Patil  and  Inspiration. 


believe,  be  substantially  what  I  have  indicated.  It  is 
so  in  its  general  features  to  every  careful  reader  of  the 
Bible.  If  so,  Paul's  Epistles  authenticate  themselves  as 
an  integral  part  of  that  unified  and  yet  diversified  col- 
lection of  literature  which  we  call  "  the  Bible."  But  that 
in  turn  authenticates  him  as  one  of  its  intended  writers. 
On  these  two  lines  of  attestation,  the  one  external, 
the  other  internal,  must  the  New  Testament  student, 
who  admits  the  fact  of  a  supernatural  revelation  through 
Jesus  Christ,  and  who  is  willing  to  accept  the  plain 
historical  statements  of  the  original  witnesses  as  to 
what  Jesus  did  and  taught,  admit  also  Paul's  claims  to 
apostleship  and  his  epistles  to  a  place  among  the  author- 
itative apostolic  teaching.  Then  the  particular  witness, 
which,  in  these  epistles,  Paul  bore  to  his  apostolic  con- 
sciousness, must  be  our  guide  in  determining  what  the 
New  Testament,  and  back  of  that  the  whole  Bible, 
really  is. 

III.  The  question  then  arises,  what  was  Paul's  doc- 
trine about  the  Scripture  ?  Did  he  attach  the  same 
conception  of  authority  and  inspiration  to  it  that  we 
have  found  him  to  attach  to  his  own  teaching,  whether 
oral  or  written  1 

(i).  To  answer  this,  we  must  first  examine  his  de- 
scriptions and  use  of  the  Old  Testament.  His  use 
of  it  is  abundant.  He  quotes  from  it  formally.  lie 
introduces  its  phrases.  His  language  is  saturated 
with  its  expressions  and  figures  of  speech.  He  assumes 
it  to  be  well  known  to  his  readers  and  an  authority 
recognized  by  them.  There  is  no  question  that  he  pos- 
sessed it  in  the  form  in  which  we  now  have  it,  in  the  He- 
brew and  substantially  in  the  Greek.     The  names,  also, 


vS"/.   Paul  aiici  Inspiration.  39 

which  he  applies  to  it  indicate  in  general  his  acceptance 
of  it,  in  unison  with  the  Jewish  Church,  as  the  divinely 
given  rule  of  belief  and  conduct.  It  is  "the  Scripture," 
called  so  by  pre-eminence,  "  the  Holy  Scriptures,"  "  the 
prophetic  Scriptures,"  "the  law  and  the  prophets" 
(Rom.  iii.  21),  "the  sacred  writings"  (2  Tim.  iii.  15). 
He  called  the  whole  collection  also  "the  law,"  quoting 
under  that  title  from  Isaiah  (i  Cor.  xiv.  21  ;  see  Rom. 
iii.  19);  and  in  another  place,  "the  oracles  of  God" 
(r«  Ibyta  Rom.  iii.  2),  a  phrase  which  must  not  be  lim- 
ited to  the  direct  utterances  of  God,  but  must  be  under- 
stood to  describe  the  Scriptures  as  a  whole.  These 
titles  indicate  his  general  attitude  toward  the  Old  Tes- 
tament. Strongly  as  he  revolted  from  the  Judaism  of 
his  day,  he  recognized  its  Bible  as  God's  gift  to  the 
Church  of  all  time,  and  applied  to  it  the  terms  of  strict- 
est faith  and  devoutest  reverence  used  by  those  who  ac- 
knowledged its  authority  (Rom.  iv.  4). 

But  not  to  dwell  on  these  obvious  facts,  it  is  import- 
ant for  our  purpose  to  observe  the  descriptions  which 
Paul  gives  of  the  object  of  the  Old  Testament  and  how 
it  came  to  fulfil  that  object.  He  held  that  the  Script- 
ure was  expressly  written  for  the  purpose  of  teaching  the 
Church,  both  Jewish  and  Christian,  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  this,  of  course,  involved  the  assumption  that 
it  had  been  composed  under  the  special  direction  of  God. 
He  affirms  this,  be  it  noted,  of  the  Scripture  as  a  book.  It 
was  not  written  in  the  interest  of  a  legal  way  of  salva- 
tion, though  it  contained  the  law ;  but  it  was  written  in 
order  that  the  principles  of  the  gospel  might  be  learned 
by  those  who  read  it  rightly.  Not  only  did  Moses  and 
the  prophets  speak  from  God,  but  the  Sacred  Scriptures 
themselves  were  in  some  way  composed  under  divine 


40  SL  Paul  and  Inspiration. 

control.  He  not  only  affirms  with  Peter  that,  "moved 
by  the  Holy  Ghost  men  spake  for  God,"  but  that  "the 
Scriptures  themselves  are  inspired  by  God."  Paul  plainly 
recognizes  the  human  authorship  of  the  books,  and 
quotes  Moses  and  David  and  Isaiah  as  speaking  therein. 
But  not  only  through  them,  but  iji  these  books  of  theirs 
did  God  also  speak.  Many  readers  notice  the  first  part 
of  Paul's  statement,  but  not  the  second.  God  spake 
"  through  the  prophets  in  the  Holy  Scriptures  "  (Rom. 

i.2). 

Hence  we  read  statements  like  these.  After  speak- 
ing of  the  sins  and  sorrows  of  Israel  in  the  wilderness, 
he  declares :  "  Now,  these  things  happened  unto  them 
by  way  of  example  (typically),  and  they  zvere  writte7i 
for  our  admonition,  upon  whom  the  ends  of  the  ages 
are  come"  (i  Cor.  x.  ii).  Here  he  represents  both  the 
facts  of  Israel's  history  and  the  record  of  them  as  hav- 
ing been  expressly  designed  for  our  spiritual  profit.  So 
again,  "  For  whatsoever  things  were  written  aforetime 
were  written  for  our  learning,  that  through  patience 
and  through  comfort  of  the  Scriptures  we  might  have 
hope  "  (Rom.  xv.  4).  And  this  pertains,  according  to 
Paul,  to  the  use  of  special  phrases ;  for  (Rom.  iv.  23)  he 
declared  that  the  particular  statement  of  Genesis  that 
"  Abraham  believed  God,  and  it  was  reckoned  to  him 
for  righteousness,"  was  not  written  for  his  sake  alone,  but 
for  our  sake  also.  The  record,  that  is,  of  the  great  typ- 
ical justification,  was  expressly  made  and  in  this  precise 
form,  for  our  enlightenment.  Even  the  directions  of  the 
Mosaic  law  were  written  for  our  sakes  (i  Cor.  ix.  10)  ; 
not  as  if  they  had  had  no  other  immediate  reference 
when  originally  enacted,  but  that  the  recording  of  them 
in  Scripture  was  for  the  purpose  of  instructing  us  in  the 


S^.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  41 

doctrines  or  duties  of  a  godly  life.  Therefore  the  Script- 
ures are,  so  to  speak,  personified  by  him, — as  when  he 
writes  that  "  the  Scripture,  foreseeing  that  God  would 
justify  the  Gentiles  by  faith,  preached  the  gospel  before- 
hand unto  Abraham"  (Gal.  iii.  8),  as  well  as  in  the 
common  formula  "  Scripture  saith."  Of  course,  these 
affirmations  could  only  have  been  made  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  he  who  secured  the  production  of  such  a  record 
and  who  therefore  speaks  in  its  language,  was  none  less 
than  God.  So  Paul  explicitly  affirms,  "  The  Gospel  of 
God,  which  he  promised  afore  by  his  prophets  in  the 
Holy  Scriptures"  (Rom.  i.  i,  2).  He  thus  clearly  dis- 
tinguished between  the  historical  revelations  made  from 
time  to  time,  which  like  the  law,  had  a  temporary  pur- 
pose, and  the  composition  of  the  Scriptures.  These,  in- 
deed, contained  the  record  of  those  revelations,  but,  be- 
sides that,  were  so  written  that  they  might  teach  for  all 
time  the  principles  of  faith  and  duty.  It  was  on  the 
basis  of  this  view  that  he  could  write  to  the  Corinth- 
ians (i  Cor.  iv.  6),  that  they  "must  not  go  beyond  the 
things  that  are  written  ";  by  which  remark  he  meant  to 
remind  them  that  the  Scriptures  were  the  rule  of  practice 
as  well  as  of  faith  to  every  Christian.  So,  too,  he  could 
write  to  Timothy  of  the  Scriptures  (2Tim.  ii.  15)  :  "they 
are  able  to  make  thee  wise  unto  salvation  through  faith 
which  is  in  Christ  Jesus."  His  declarations  then  cul- 
minate in  the  statement :  "  Every  Scripture,"  that  is,  the 
whole  collection  to  which  he  had  just  referred  as  the 
"sacred  writings,"  and  all  their  parts,  "  being  inspired  by 
God,  is  also  profitable  for  teaching,  for  reproof,  for  cor- 
rection, for  instruction  which  is  in  righteousness,  that  the 
man  of  God  may  be  complete,  furnished  completely  unto 
all   good  works"  (2  Tim.  iii.  16,  17).     Of  this  last  pas- 


42  S/.  Paul  and  Inspiration. 

sage  I  will  speak  presently.  I  desire  now  only  to  point 
out  that  Paul  represents  not  onl}^  the  Hebrew  economy 
as  designed  by  God  to  serve  a  temporary  purpose  in  the 
education  of  his  people,  and  Moses  and  the  prophets 
as  having  spoken  from  God,  but  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
themselves  also  as  a  divinely  made  book  or  collection  of 
books  intended  to  teach  the  Gospel  and  an  abiding  rule 
of  faith  and  conduct  to  the  Christian.  He  affirms  not 
only  that  the  authors  of  the  Old  Testament  were  media 
of  revelation,  but  that  the  literary  product  itself,  and 
as  such,  was  in  some  way  divinely  made  and  given  to 
the  Church. 

(2).  What  light  then  is  thrown  upon  these  formal 
statements  by  Paul's  actual  use  of  Scripture  } 

{a).  He  habitually  employs  it,  in  accordance,  as  I 
have  already  remarked,  with  his  idea  of  its  purpose,  to 
show  that  it  taught  his  "  Gospel."  He  does  this  not  by 
catching  at  plausible  phrases,  or  by  gleaning  here  and 
there  from  the  Old  Testament  expressions  which  imply 
his  doctrines ;  but  by  showing  that  the  Gospel  was  the 
very  substance  of  the  Scripture.  Christ,  as  revealed  to 
the  apostles,  was  the  key  to  the  Old  Testament.  The 
unbelieving  Jews  read  the  Old  Covenant  with  a  veil 
upon  their  hearts  (2  Cor.  iii.  14,  15),  but  he — "the  veil 
having  been  done  away  in  Christ " — grasped  the  real 
meaning  of  the  prophetic  writings.  The  more  closely 
we  study  Paul's  use  of  Scripture  the  more  should  we  be 
filled  with  admiration  at  the  clearness  and  penetration 
with  which  he  apprehended  the  essential  religious  teach- 
ing of  the  passages  he  cites.  Take  the  great  passages, 
which  I  need  not  quote,  in  which  he  uncovers  in  God's 
recorded  transactions  with  Abraham  the  doctrine  of 
gracious  justification  through  faith  ;  or  the  way  in  which 


S/.  Patil  and  Inspiration.  43 

(Rom.  iii.)  he  presents  the  Scriptural  indictment  of  man 
as  a  sinner  by  a  series  of  citations  from  the  Psalms 
and  Isaiah  so  arranged  as  to  set  forth  in  sacred  phrase 
the  fact,  the  practice,  the  source  of  human  wickedness ; 
or  the  magnificent  argument  (Rom.  ix.-xi.)  wherein  he 
justifies  on  Scriptural  grounds  the  loss  by  the  Jews  of 
their  peculiar  privileges.  I  do  not  see  how  any  one  can 
examine  Paul's  use  of  Scripture  in  these  classical  in- 
stances without  being  convinced  that  the  apostle,  so  far 
from  juggling  with  words,  penetrated  to  the  very  marrow 
of  the  law  and  the  prophets.  There  are  instances,  I 
know,  where  at  first  sight  he  seems  to  deal  with  words 
rather  than  with  thoughts,  and  to  be  guilty  of  fanciful 
interpretation.  These  instances  are  few  in  number,  but 
they  have  been  made  the  most  of.  His  use  (Gal.  iv. 
21-31)  of  the  story  of  Sarah  and  tiagar  with  their  sons  ; 
his  interpretation  (i  Cor.  ix.  9,  10  ;  i  Tim.  v.  17,  18)  of 
the  Mosaic  command,  "  Thou  shalt  not  muzzle  the  oxen 
treading  out  the  corn  ";  his  citation  of  Isaiah  xxviii.  11, 
"  By  men  of  strange  tongues  will  I  speak  unto  this  peo- 
ple "  (i  Cor.  xiv.  21),  as  bearing  on  the  use  by  the 
Church  of  the  miraculous  gift  of  tongues, — are  ex- 
amples, to  which  as  many  more  might  be  added.  (2  Cor. 
iii.  14,  15,  "When  it  shall  turn  unto  the  Lord,  the  veil  is 
taken  away";  2  Cor.  viii.  15,  "As  it  is  written,  he  that 
gathereth  much,"  etc.,  Rom.  x.  6-9).  But  certainly  it  is 
only  fair  to  judge  of  these  instances  by  the  apostle's 
prevailing  habit,  and  to  ask  if  further  examination  will 
not  show  that  below  the  apparently  verbal  interpreta- 
tion there  was  the  perception  by  him  of  a  principle  in 
each  case  of  which  the  Old  Testament  passage  was  one 
expression  and  his  application  of  it  another.  I  believe 
that  this  can  be  shown  in  every  case,  not  excepting  even 


44  •^^-   Paiil  and  Inspiratio7i. 

the  miscalled  "allegory"  of  Hagar  and  Sarah,  and  the 
much  misunderstood  remark  about  the  unmuzzled  ox. 
It  should,  moreover,  not  be  forgotten  that  these  inter- 
pretations, which  are  offensive  to  some,  proceed  con- 
spicuously on  the  supposition  that  the  Scripture,  as  a 
writing,  was  a  divine  work.  But  many  more  examples 
might  be  adduced  in  which  Paul's  use  of  Scripture  must 
have  been  to  his  first  readers  like  the  breaking  of  sun- 
light  into  darkened  chambers.  Sometimes  by  merely 
a  single  word  he  illuminates  prophetic  language,  and 
again,  by  a  group  of  passages,  he  lays  bare  at  one  stroke 
the  golden  ore  which  the  older  revelation  contained. 

{b).  But  further,  he  treats  the  Biblical  narrative  as 
true.  This  will  be  denied  by  none ;  but  it  is  import- 
ant to  observe  how  vital  the  truthfulness  of  the  narra- 
tive was  to  Paul's  theological  position.  For  he  con- 
ceived of  the  Gospel  as  the  climax  in  a  series  of  econ- 
omies which  were  particularly  ordered  by  God  with  a 
view  to  the  announcement  and  understanding  of  it.  He 
begins  commonly  with  the  period  of  the  promise,  and  then 
explains  the  reason  of  the  later  introduction  of  the  law. 
In  his  analysis  of  sin,  however,  he  goes  back  to  the  first 
man  and  distinctly  bases  his  doctrine  of  justification  on 
the  unity  of  the  race  in  Adam.  It  thus  appears  that 
the  truthfulness  of  the  Old  Testament's  narrativ^e — so 
far  at  least  as  its  leading  features  are  concerned — was 
fundamental  to  Paul's  view  of  God's  government  of  the 
world  and  of  the  method  of  man's  salvation.  And  so, 
when  alluding  to  facts  stated  in  the  narrative,  he  always 
treats  them  as  real.  This  is  to  be  particularly  noted  for 
the  reason  that  his  view  of  Scripture,  which  I  have  de- 
scribed, as  written  for  the  spiritual  instruction  of  the 
later  Church,  might  have  led  him,  as  it  has  led  others, 


S/.   Paul  a7id  Inspiratio7i.  45 

to  undervalue  the  historical  nature  of  the  facts.  It 
might  have,  as  it  did  in  less  accurate  hands,  transformed 
Scripture  into  an  allegory.  But  even  when  drawing  his 
spiritual  lesson  from  Hagar  and  Sarah,  he  manifestly 
regards  the  facts  related  of  them  as  true.  So  he 
speaks  of  the  life  of  Israel  in  the  desert,  "  These  things 
happened  unto  them  (typically  or)  by  way  of  example." 
He  did  not  look  upon  the  narrative  as  an  allegory, 
but  as  a  relation  of  actual  facts,  some  of  which  were  of 
vital  importance  for  a  right  conception  of  God's  deal- 
ings with  mankind,  and  so  narrated  as  to  set  forth,  when 
properly  understood,  what  God  intended  us  to  learn. 
So  organic  was  the  relation  in  his  view  between  the 
dispensation  of  the  Gospel  and  the  previous  history  of 
Israel  as  set  forth  in  the  Scriptures,  that  only  in  the  light 
of  the  latter  could  it  be  said,  "when  the  fulness  of 
time  was  come,  God  sent  forth  his  Son  "  (Gal.  iv.  4). 

{b).  Still  again,  he  is  careful  at  times  to  support  his 
argument  by  an  appeal  to  the  precise  words  used  by 
the  Sacred  Writers.  Did  he  teach  that  "  Christ  has 
been  made  a  curse  for  us"?  He  appeals,  in  justifica- 
tion of  his  language,  to  the  language  of  Deuteronomy, 
"  Cursed  is  every  one  that  hangeth  on  a  tree  "  (Gal.  iii. 
10).  He  confirms  his  doctrine  of  the  spiritual  Israel 
by  the  language  of  the  promise  to  Abraham,  "  and  to 
thy  seed";  "as  of  one,  even  Christ"  (Gal.  iii.  16).  So 
in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  his  appeal  frequently  lies, 
to  the  language  of  Scripture  as  well  as  to  its  real  sig- 
nificance. He  points  out  that  the  Scripture  declares 
that  "the  just  shall  live  by  faith  "  (i.  17)  ;  that  "Abra- 
ham believed  God,  and  it  was  reckoned  to  him  for 
righteousness "  (iv.  3)  ;  that  circumcision  w^as  given 
him  "as  a  sign"  (iv.  u)  ;  that  he  was  intended  to  be 


46  Sf.  Paul  and  Inspiration. 

the  spiritual  ancestor  of  believing  Gentiles  because 
called  "the  Father  of  many  nations"  (iv.  17);  that  his 
spiritual  seed  should  not  be  identified  with  his  fleshly 
descendants  because  it  was  written,  "  In  Isaac  shall  thy 
seed  be  called  "  (ix.  7)  ;  that  the  Scripture  itself  applies 
the  word  "hardening"  to  God's  rejection  of  the  repro- 
bate (ix.  18).  These  examples  are  sufficient  to  prove 
that  in  Paul's  mind  the  very  phraseology  of  the  Script- 
ure was  valid  for  religious  argument,  and  expressed 
divine  thought. 

What  then  is  to  be  said  of  certain  features  of  his 
quotations  which  appear  to  many  inconsistent  with  such 
belief  in  the  value  of  Scripture  language  ?  It  is  a  fact 
that  he  often  makes  his  quotations  loosely,  and  occa- 
sionally does  no  more  than  give  their  substance.  Some- 
times, also,  he  evidently  changed  the  phraseology  on 
purpose.  In  a  number  of  instances  he  differs  from  the 
Septuagint,  and  sometimes  follows  the  Septuagint 
where  it  differs  from  the  Hebrew,  and  occasionally  dif- 
fers from  both.  Many  regard  these  facts  as  wholly  in- 
consistent with  any  high  valuation  of  the  words  of 
Scripture.  But,  aside  from  the  fact  that  the  latter  view 
would  make  Paul  contradict  his  own  express  statements, 
the  following  additional  facts  deserve  consideration. 

It  is  wholly  unreasonable  to  require  that  even  an  in- 
spired man,  who  believed  that  the  words  of  Scripture 
were  written  under  God's  direction,  should  always  quote 
Scripture  with  textual  exactness.  This  would  be  to  in- 
sist on  his  becoming  a  pedant,  as  if  God  could  not  in- 
spire a  man  to  write  rhetorically,  or  poetically,  as  well  as, 
when  the  occasion  required,  with  simple  prosaic  ac- 
curacy. We  have  only  a  right  to  require  of  Paul,  on 
his  own  theory  of  the  inspiration  both  of  Scripture  and 


St.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  /^y 

himself,  that  when  he  declares  Scripture  to  have  said  a 
thing,  it  shall  be  true  that  Scripture  did  say  it,  and  that, 
when  he  does  argue  from  the  words  of  Scripture,  the 
words  shall  be  there  and  his  argument  from  them  be  in 
accordance  with  Scriptural  principles.  To  insist  that 
Paul's  doctrine  of  Scripture,  as  we  have  presented  it, 
ought  to  have  precluded  him  from  ever  citing  the  sense 
rather  than  the  language  of  the  Old  Testament,  or  from 
ever  combining  passages  together,  or  from  ever  failing 
to  correct  any  bad  translation  of  the  Septuagint  when 
the  existing  translation  did  not  invalidate  the  force  of 
his  appeal,  or  from  changing  the  language  intentionally, 
when  by  so  doing  he  could  bring  out  the  meaning  more 
strongly  for  the  purpose  in  hand,  is  to  insist  that  his 
epistles,  because  inspired,  should  have  none  of  those 
rhetorical  qualities  which  were  the  natural  manifesta- 
tion of  the  apostle's  own  mental  processes. 

In  reality,  however,  Paul  is  remarkably  exact,  in  the 
great  majority  of  instances,  when  formally  quoting 
from  the  Old  Testament.  The  wonder  is  that  his 
memory  served  him  so  well ;  for  of  course  he  could  sel- 
dom have  had  the  means,  if  he  so  desired,  of  verifvino- 
his  citations.  When  he  does  quote  loosely,  his  argu- 
ment never  depends  on  the  verbal  accuracy  of  his  quo- 
tation, and  he  always  correctly  represents  the  teaching 
of  Scripture  when  he  professes  to  do  so.  His  mind, 
however,  was  so  saturated  with  Scripture  that  he  seems 
often  to  be  rather  speaking  himself  in  its  words  than  to 
be  citing  it,  and  he  continually  strives  in  citing  to  ex- 
plain and  apply  it.  Thus  in  Galatians  we  find  eleven 
clear  quotations.  Of  these,  five  (iii.  6,  ii,  i6;  iv.  27;  v. 
14)  are  verbally  exact,  and  three  (iii.  8,  12,  13)  practi- 
cally so, — (z'.  e.,  the  differences,  chiefly  in  tense  or  person 


48  S^.  Paul  and  Inspiration. 

or  verbal  form,  are  too  slight  to  inv^alidate  the  accuracy 
of  the  quotation),  while  the  variations  in  the  other 
three  (ii.  16;  iii.  10;  iv.  30)  can  be  accounted  for  by  the 
apostle's  desire  to  state  the  Old  Testament  teaching  in 
phraseology  which  would  make  its  real  significance 
clearer  to  his  readers.  In  i  Corinthians,  out  of  27  in- 
stances of  reference  to  Old  Testament  language,  only 
II  are  again  formal  quotations.  Of  these,  seven  are 
exact  or  practically  so,  and  three  (iii.  19  ;  xiv.  21  ;  xv. 
54)  indicate  either  acquaintance  with  the  Hebrew  and 
an  intentional  correction  of  the  LXX,  or  else  the  pos- 
session by  Paul  of  a  better  Greek  version  than  we  have. 
The  remaining  quotation  (ii.  9)  is  very  free,  so  that 
some  suppose  it  to  have  been  taken  from  a  lost  apocry- 
phal book.  But  that  is  a  violent  hypothesis,  opposed 
to  Paul's  invariable  custom  elsewhere  ;  and  since  the 
citation  expresses  Scriptural  teaching  in  Scriptural  fig- 
ures of  speech,  and  since  there  is  a  passage  in  Isaiah 
(liv.  4)  which  obviously  forms  its  starting-point,  we  can 
only  look  upon  this  case  as  one  in  which  the  apostle 
modified  consciously  the  prophetic  declaration  in  order 
to  apply  its  principle  more  forcibly  to  the  matter  of 
which  he  was  writing. 

In  the  Romans  there  are  about  ']2,  quotations  and 
allusions  of  all  kinds.  Of  these,  27  are  exact  citations, 
and  20  practically  so.  Only  8  could  be  called  loose,  8 
are  mere  allusions,  2  are  centos  of  scattered  passages 
grouped  for  a  purpose.  In  4  cases  we  may  observe 
apparently  intentional  changes  of  verbiage  to  make  the 
bearing  of  the  truth  more  evident.  Seven  (i.  17;  ix.  i, 
7,  32  ;  X.  15  ;  xi.  4,  34  ;  xii.  19)  times  he  differs  from  the 
Septuagint,  and  corresponds  more  closely  to  Hebrew.  In 
six  (iii.  4,  14;  ix.  32;  x.  11  ;  xii.  19;  xv.  12)  instances  he 


S/.  Paul  arid  Inspiration.  49 

follows  the  Septuagint  where  it  differs  from  the  Hebrew 
but  in  none  of  these  cases  does  the  sense  of  Script- 
ure suffer.  Once  (xi.  26)  he  differs  in  a  single  word 
from  both  Hebrew  and  Septuagint,  saying,  "  Out  ^/Sion 
shall  come  the  deliverer,"  instead  of  "To  or  for  Sion  "; 
but  here  he  apparently  mingled  a  reminiscence  of  one 
of  the  Psalms  with  the  language  of  Isaiah. 

It  would  be  tedious  for  me  to  give  more  details.     I 
believe  these  to  be  fair  specimens  of  the  proportion  of 
exact  and  inexact  quotations  in  Paul's  Epistles  as  well 
as    of  his    methods.     The    key  to   whatever  difficulty 
remains  is  found  in  the  fact,  which  should  never  be  for- 
gotten, that   Paul  combined  and  meant  to  combine  in 
his  use  of  Scripture  the  functions  of  both  an  appellant 
and  an  interpreter.    He  is  ever  bent  on  letting  the  light 
of  the  Gospel  on  the  Scripture,  as  well  as  on  supporthig 
the  Gospel  by  the  Scripture.     He  never  pretended  that 
he  had  derived  his  doctrine  from  the  Scripture.     He 
always  claimed  that  he  had  derived  it  by  revelation  from 
Jesus  Christ.     Then,  however,  he  saw  the  meaning  of 
Scripture,  and  could   both  appeal  to  it  and  explain  it. 
His   exegetical    method   therefore  was   determined    by 
his  practical   purpose.     He  had  no  need,  as  we  have, 
first  to  state  the  "grammatico-historical"  sense  of  the 
passage  quoted,  and  then  to  elaborately  show  the  prin- 
ciple on  which  it  could  be  applied  to  the  case  in  hand. 
When  quoting,  he  often  is  interpreting.      Hence  some 
of  his  striking  combinations  of  passages.      Hence  his 
change    of    its    phraseology    when    occasion    required. 
Hence  his  attitude  now  of  reverence  for  its  letter,  and 
now  of  apparent   disregard   of  its  letter  and  attention 
solely  to  its  essential  meaning.   When  all  these  facts  are 
duly  considered,  there  appears  nothing  in    Paul's  actual 


50  SL  Paul  and  Inspiration. 

use  of  Scripture  which  can  be  fairly  made  to  contradict 
his  expressed  doctrine. 

And  now  in  the  light  of  this  study  we  may  grasp  the 
meaning  which  he  himself  must  have  meant  to  convey  by 
the  word  which  in  his  last  epistle  he  applied  to  Scripture, 
— dtoTTvtoazo:;.  It  is  his  own  word.  It  means  "  breathed 
into  by  God."  He  affirms  it  not  of  the  writers,  but 
of  the  sacred  writings.  These  writings  are  "God  in- 
breathed." The  apostle  must  be  his  own  interpreter, 
and  by  the  aid  of  what  I  have  shown  is  the  idea  which 
he  embodied  in  this  now  classic  word  to  be  obtained. 
By  their  inspiration  he  evidently  meant  that,  as  writ- 
ings, they  were  so  composed  under  God's  particular 
direction  that  both  in  substance  and  in  form  they  were 
the  special  utterance  of  his  mind  and  will.  Their  words 
like  the  apostle's  were  "pneumatic."  The  Divine  Spirit 
dwelt  in  them  and  breathed  through  them.  And  this  in 
no  vague,  mystic,  intangible  sense,  but  in  the  same 
sense  in  which  he  had  said  of  himself  and  his  fellow- 
apostles,  "  We  speak  not  in  words  which  man's  wisdom 
teacheth,  but  w^hich  the  Holy  Ghost  teacheth,"  and  with 
the  same  result  that  the  writings  were  veritably  the  word 
of  God.  How  the  Divine  Spirit  operated  in  either  case 
Paul  does  not  say.  The  fact  and  its  consequences  he 
unmistakably  affirms. 

I  have  purposely  omitted  any  appeal  to  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  because  its  authorship  is  disputed  even  by 
evangelical  scholars.  If,  howev^er,  it  was  not  written  by 
Paul,  it  is  certainly  the  utterance  of  Pauline  ideas. 
When,  then,  we  find  in  it  the  Psalmist's  words  quoted, 
"To-day  if  ye  will  hear  his  voice,"  with  this  formula, 
"as  the  Holy  Ghost  saith," — and  when  we  observe  fur- 
ther that  the  writer's  argument  turns  in  great  part  on 


Sf.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  51 

the  use  in  the  psalm  of  the  word  "  to-day," — we  are  made 
doubly  sure  that  our  interpretation  of  Paul's  doctrine  of 
Scripture  is  correct,  and  that  he  held  it  in  common  with 
the  other  Christian  teachers  of  the  apostolic  age. 

Such  is  the  account  which  to  the  exegetical  student 
Paul  renders  of  his  own  inspiration  and  of  that  of  the 
Old  Testament.  That  the  same  is  equally  true  of  the 
other  writings  of  the  New  Testament  will  hardly  be 
denied  by  any  who  accept  Paul's  representations.  He 
recognized  the  authority  of  the  other  apostles  as  of  the 
same  nature  with  his  own,  and  the  books  which  they 
wrote  or  gave  to  the  Church  must  stand  on  the  same 
level  with  his  or  the  whole  Pauline  doctrine  of  inspiration 
be  given  up.  He  nowhere  affirms,  be  it  noted,  that  inspi- 
ration was  confined  to  the  apostles,  and  his  recognition  of 
Christian  prophets, — as  when  he  declares  the  Church  to 
be  built  "on  the  foundation  of  apostles  and  prophets," — 
would  seem  to  imply  the  contrary.  But  he  does  make 
the  apostles  infallible  teachers  and  the  authorized  found- 
ers of  the  Church.  Those  writings  therefore  which, 
though  not  written  by  apostles,  were  accepted  by  the 
Church  from  the  beginning  as  part  of  Scripture,  must  be 
regarded  as  sealed  with  their  authority  and  therefore  also 
inspired  ;  and  the  fact  is  that  in  the  following  century 
apostolic  authority, — direct  or  indirect, — was  the  express 
ground  on  which  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  were 
received  by  the  Church.  That  even  in  the  apostolic  age 
itself  the  conception  of  a  New  Testament  Scripture 
had  formed,  to  which  the  same  qualities  were  attributed 
which  were  held  to  belong  to  the  Old  Testament,  ap- 
pears incidentally  when  Paul  cites  (i  Tim.  v.  iS)  the 
saying  of  our  Lord,  "  The  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire  " 
(Luke  X.  7)  as  a  saying  of  Scripture,  and  when  Peter  in 


52  S^.  Paul  a7id  Inspiration. 

his  second  epistle  refers  to  Paul's  epistles  under  the  same 
title.  Those  who,  partly  because  of  these  expressions, 
would  deny  the  genuineness  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles  and 
of  Second  Peter  must  surely  fail  to  realize  what  Paul's 
teaching  on  the  subject  of  inspired  Scripture  really 
was. 

IV.  Now  it  is  not  my  place  to  condense  these  exe- 
getical  results  into  a  dogmatic  formula,  though  I  think 
it  obvious  what  that  formula  should  be.  I  desire  to  state 
in  conclusion  what,  I  apprehend,  should  be  the  effect  of 
these  claims  of  the  Bible  on  the  mind  of  the  Christian 
scholar  as  he  approaches  its  study.  I  say  "  Christian 
scholar  "  because  with  such  alone  w^e  are  concerned.  We 
are  here  as  confessedly  Christian  men,  and  it  is  not 
likely  that  many  of  us  would  devote  our  lives  to  the 
study  of  the  Bible,  were  it  not  for  our  settled  convictions 
that  its  teaching  is  of  supreme  value  to  mankind.  But 
when,  in  addition  to  this  general  conviction,  we  find  it 
to  make  such  pretensions  as  I  have  endeavored  to  de- 
scribe, these  cannot  but  impose  special  requirements  upon 
the  student. 

Certainly  he  must  approach  it  with  peculiar  reverence. 
It  is  not  like  other  books.  It  is  not  inspired  in  the  sense 
in  which  works  of  genius  or  spiritual  insight  are.  In  its 
production  God  was  immediately  and  peculiarly  con- 
cerned. As  our  Lord  is  the  Son  of  God  in  a  sense  in 
which  His  people  are  not,  though  they  also  in  their  way 
are  sons  of  God,  so  is  the  Bible  His  word  in  a  sense 
which  cannot  be  affirmed  even  of  those  other  literary 
products  (of  which  there  are  many),  which  contain  the 
J  truth  and  manifest  the  Divine  Spirit.  Such  is  the 
Bible's  own  account  of  itself ;  and  if  we  may  not  accept 


S^.  Paid  and  Inspiration.  53 

its  account  of  itself,  why  should  we  care  to  ascertain  itSj 
account  of  other  things  ? 

So  it  is  hardly  possible  for  one  who  realizes  this  to 
go  to  the  study  of  it  in  the  same  mental  attitude  in 
which  he  would  approach  other  literature.  He  is  deal- 
ing with  a  body  which  is,  he  has  reason  to  believe,  in 
all  its  parts  quick  with  divine  thought  and  life ;  and  he 
cannot  use  his  lens  and  scalpel  on  it  with  ordinary 
emotions. 

He  would,  however,  utterly  misapprehend  its  charac- 
ter and  claims,  if  his  reverence  were  blind  or  unintelli- 
gent. The  inspired  Word  pretends  to  be  in  every  sense 
a  living  thing,  and,  to  enter  into  its  secrets,  the  student 
must  himself  be  alive,  both  intellectually  and  morally. 
He  is  very  far  from  dealing  with  a  mechanical  product. 
In  its  doctrines  and  its  words,  in  its  substance  and  its 
form,  in  its  historical  genesis  and  in  its  proclamation  of 
eternal  truths,  the  Bible  is  an  organism, — with  its  roots 
running  down  into  the  history,  the  language,  the  social, 
mental,  and  religious  activity  both  of  the  Hebrews  and 
of  the  greater  world  about  them, — while  yet  its  mould- 
ing, forming  principle  is  derived  from  above.  As  I 
have  said,  Paul  nowhere  describes  the  method  by  which 
the  Divine  Spirit  operated  in  himself  or  in  the  prophets- 
to  produce  the  Scripture.  It  is  only  the  fact  and  the 
consequences  to  which  he  bears  his  testimony.  The 
method  we  must  judge,  so  far  as  may  be  possible,  from 
the  phenomena.  These  point  to  a  complex  process, 
wherein  many  subordinate  agents  were  made  to  co-oper- 
ate with  the  immediate  exercise  of  divine  power.  Out 
of  the  matrix  of  a  divinely  guided  history  was  this  divine 
— human  book  born,  and  our  very  faith  in  its  complete 
divine  vitality  should  make  us  eager  to  apprehend  every 


54  '^^-  Pcitil  arid  hispiration. 

human  element  which  entered  into  its  being.  Through 
the  form  alone  can  we  reach  the  substance  ;  through  the 
words  the  thought ;  through  the  historical  the  doctrinal ; 
through  the  human  the  divine.  Every  element  of  this 
complex  literary  product  acquires  new  interest  when  we 
believe  that  through  them  all  we  are  brought  into  con- 
tact with  the  process  in  and  by  which  God  has  revealed 
himself  and  his  will  to  men. 

At  the  same  time  his  reverence  for  the  finished  pro- 
duct will  keep  the  student  cautious  and  humble  in  his 
judgments.  He  will  not  expect  to  understand  everything 
about  the  construction  of  the  Bible.  He  will  not  be 
staggered  if  he  find  in  it  statements  which  he  cannot 
yet  comprehend,  or  phenomena  which  he  cannot  yet  ex- 
plain. He  will  assuredly  trust  its  statements  when  they 
are  clearly  ascertained.  If  his  reverence  be  intelligent 
and  his  examination  be  critical,  as  they  certainly  ought 
to  be,  both  his  intelligence  and  his  criticism  will  recog- 
nize that  the  character  of  the  subject  examined  sets  ob- 
vious limitations  upon  their  exercise. 

(i).  But  to  be  more  specific,  the  Bible's  account  of  it- 
self will  impress  upon  the  student  the  great  importance  of 
ascertaining  by  valid  processes  the  original  text.  We 
know  enough  of  the  history  of  the  New  Testament 
text  to  perceive  that  in  all  that  is  required  for  the  cor- 
rect ascertainment  of  Christian  doctrine  and  duty,  God 
has  "  by  singular  care  and  providence  kept  it  pure 
through  all  ages."  Nevertheless,  the  student  will  want 
to  secure  as  nearly  as  possible  an  absolute  reproduction 
of  the  original  that  he  may  apprehend  the  precise  thought 
of  the  inspired  penman  even  in  its  smallest  details. 
The  Bible's  account  of  itself  would  seem  to  provide 
the  strongest  incentive  to  the  study  of  textual  criticism. 


S/.  Paul  and  Inspiration.  5^ 

(2).  The  same  reason  also  will  stimulate  to  the  most 
exact  and  painstaking  exegesis.     To  one  who  accepts 
the  Bible's  account  of  itself  no  question,  even  of  gram- 
matical structure,  will  appear  without  importance.    The 
usage  of  words,  their  origin  and  their  receptiveness  of 
Scriptural  thought,  the  laws  governing  literary  compo- 
sition of  this  and  of  that  kind,  will  be  investigated  by 
him  with  new  zeal.     Everything  will  be  valued  which 
will  enable  him  to  grasp  the  precise  shade  of  thought  in 
the  section  before  him.     It  would  be  an  immense  mis- 
take for  him  to  become  a  careless  exegete,  or  to  fancy 
that,  because  its  verbal  forms  are  inspired,  he  is  not  to 
strive  to  grasp  the  very  thought  which  is  in  them,— or 
to  suppose  that,  because  in  all  its  parts  it  is  inspired,  he 
is  not  to  carefully  observe  from  it  the  proportion  of 
truth  and  to  grasp  its  teaching  as  a  whole, — or  to  allow 
his  spiritual  fancy  to  interpret   Scripture  as  the  exigen- 
cies of  the  pulpit  may  seem  to  require.     This  was  the 
fault  of  much  of  exegesis  in  the  ancient  Church  ;  and 
though  it  was  based  on  a  correct  doctrine  of  Scripture, 
and  was  meant    to  do  honor  to  the  inspired  Word,  it 
wrought  for  ages  injury  to  the  truth  and  hid,  while  it 
pretended    to   unfold,  the  word  of  God.     We    should 
rather  conclude  from  the  inspiration  of  Scripture,  that 
every  statement  of  it  is  to  be  apprehended  with  precise 
accuracy, — is  to  be  seen  to  be  just  what  it  exactly  is,  if 
the  divine  thought  in  it  and  the  relation  of  its  thought 
to  others,  and  so  the  complex  thought  of  the  whole  is 
to  be   really  learned.     They  who  accept  and  teach  a 
wholly  inspired  Bible  ought  to  count  no  labor  too  great 
to  ascertain,  by  the  use  of  every  critical  instrument  as 
well    as    by  devout    sympathy  with    both    the    human 
and  the  divine  authors,  the  exact  meaning  of  the  book. 


56  S/.  Paul  and  hispii'aiion. 

(3).  And  then,  building  on  precise  exegesis,  inter- 
preting according  to  the  natural  rules  of  the  various 
kinds  of  literary  composition,  the  student  will  move 
through  the  Bible  from  its  beginning  to  its  close, — feel- 
ing his  way,  as  it  were,  from  fibre  to  fibre,  from  part  to 
part,  of  this  living  organism, — until  he  approaches  to  an 
apprehension  of  it  as  a  whole,  perceives  its  structural 
unfolding  and  its  vital  principle,  and  is  thus  enabled  to 
enter  into  the  fulness  of  its  content.  Such  a  student 
should  not  be  surprised,  if  he  discover  that  elements, 
historical  or  verbal  or  doctrinal,  which  enter  into  the 
structure  of  the  Bible,  had  a  previous  existence  of  their 
own.  There  is  an  economy  observable  in  all  God's 
operations  whereby  he  uses  existing  materials  for  new 
purposes  rather  than  creates  similar  ones,  and  the  entirely 
unmechanical  view  of  inspiration  which  we  have  gleaned 
from  the  Bible  makes  it  even  probable  that  in  some  cases 
(for  example  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels)  a  valid  literary 
criticism  may  discern  pre-existing  materials.  But  the 
student  who  accepts  the  Bible's  account  of  itself  must 
admit  that  only  as  incorporated  in  the  Scripture  can 
such  materials  be  affirmed  to  be  inspired  ;  and  while 
such  investigations  may  interest  and  instruct  him,  he 
will  feel  it  to  be  his  chief  duty  to  apprehend  aright  the 
teaching  of  the  Bible  itself.  He  will  feel  that  only  by 
entering  into  its  thought,  as  that  is  progressively  un- 
folded in  the  Bible,  will  he  be  able  to  use  the  book  for 
the  supreme  purposes  for  which  it  claims  to  have  been 
given. 

Some  one  will  say,  perhaps,  that  in  entering  on  my 
professorial  work,  I  ought  to  have  emphasized  the 
human  side  of  Scripture  rather  than  the  divine  side, 
— since  the  examination  of  the  Bible  on  its  human  side 


S^.  Paul  and  Inspiration,  57 

has  in  modern  times  proved  so  rich  a  blessing  to  the 
Bible-using  Church.  I  have  no  intention  of  forgetting 
this.  But  there  is  now  no  danger,  as  once  there  was,  of 
our  undervaluing  the  human  side.  The  danger  lies  in 
our  failing  to  perceive  the  definite  claims  which  the 
Bible  makes  for  itself ;  in  our  failing  to  perceive  that, 
even  though  human,  it  is  also  divine,  and  this,  not  in  a 
vague,  indefinable  way,  but  in  the  distinct  sense  that,  as  a^ 
literary  product,  and  in  all  the  parts  thereof,  it  is  ani- 
mated by  the  thought  and  moulded  by  the  intention  of 
the  Divine  Spirit.  The  danger  lies  in  our  thinking  that 
the  admission  of  this  is  to  introduce  a  mechanical  con- 
ception of  God's  handiwork,  and  is  inconsistent  with  the 
rich  variety  of  thought  and  language  by  which  the  Bible 
is  obviously  marked  ;  whereas  it  is  rather  the  strongest 
stimulus  to  devout,  critical  investigation,  while  the  limits 
which  it  puts  upon  criticism  are  only  those  which  loyalty 
to  the  abundant  evidence  that  the  Scriptures  do  speak 
from  God  would  naturally  dictate.  As  divine,  has  the 
Bible  been  bequeathed  to  us  by  the  apostles.  As  such,  it 
is  more  worthy  of  lifelong  study  than  on  any  other  suppo- 
sition it  could  possibly  be.  As  such,  its  humanity,  if  I 
may  so  speak,  becomes  the  priceless  treasure  that  it  is. 
As  such,  it  occupies  the  place  it  does  alike  in  theological 
discipline,  in  the  Church,  and  in  human  history.  As 
such,  and  only  as  such,  does  it  provide  that  which  noth- 
ing else  provides, — a  rock,  on  which  man's  feet  may  stand 
amid  the  shifting  sands  of  thought  and  while  the  mist 
of  ignorance, — dimly  lit  by  guesses,  hopes,  and  fears, — 
still  hides  the  sun. 


